We have to start somewhere...

Dear Descendants,

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Well, here goes another attempt at expressing. I am not sure where to start. A train of thought leaves the stations, and I subject it to the strictest of code violation tests to see if it’s even worth sharing or worth being read. And it fails some tests. And it never leaves.

So, I will take the cop-out that seems to be decently popular amongst … overthinkers? narcissists? people who claim to be their own harshest critics and take pride in believing that? – I will go meta. I will talk about why I am writing. I will allow myself to go on short tangents and openly confess that I am doing so. And of course, I will mention that I am going meta as well.

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Reason

Good writing always has extensive plans behind it. For me, planning is where many ideas die without being explored because it makes the task of exploration seem more like a chore. Or perhaps I have been viewing planning as too strict of an activity. Maybe writing like this is also how planning takes place.
Either way, I am hoping (and I believe) that writing like this will help me understand how to explore my ideas better. So that is one more goal for writing without much planning. And I will try to keep it to that. However, I need to accept that I have had commitment issues to projects, particularly the ones without deadlines. So this “writing without planning” motivation can end at any point. However, I have no plans yet to do so.

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That said, the reason that drove me the most to start writing is exercising [contemplation, reasoning] and making mistakes to learn. I had been somewhat aware of my susceptibility to opinion and information throughout high school. However, whenever I chatted away with my undergrad roommates L and John, they displayed a level of skepticism and critical thinking that felt so powerful that I was in constant awe. I wanted to achieve that and go beyond it (they would often be self-critical, so it was clear they believed there was a beyond). Since then, I have diligently worked to carefully craft a level of skepticism and self-awareness that analytically studies the world. In a recent interaction with John on the purpose of journalism in the sciences, I felt that I may have become somewhat complacent.
Currently, the biggest scope of improvement I see is being able to form my own opinions that are grounded in sound arguments and relevant evidence. I feel that I have hit a brick wall with training my critical thinking through simply reading. I now must create, fail, and learn through errors. I am sure my background in machine learning is likely biasing me towards this conclusion – one of the best ways to learn is through making predictions and error calculations. But this is a risk I am willing to take.

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Audience
Who am I expressing myself to? Most forms of self-expression we come across are, by [their very nature, anthropic-like principle, observation bias], public forms of self-expression – paintings, YouTube videos, Instagram shorts, books. I asked Aanchal, a recent friend I made, how she expresses herself. She told me that often she enjoys playing loud music and dancing by herself. She also told me how she recently achieved a perfect headstand and created a Lego flower set, and was excited to show those to her close-ones. During our chat I concluded two things: Firstly, there is no singular form that someone uses (kind of obvious), and it changes all the time. Secondly, the public/private divide also changes from mood-to-mood and form-to-form.
These are no eureka moment realizations, but this conversation helped me feel comfortable with the ever-changing audience for this. A social-media platform does not seem the right tool for this since there is a clear public-oriented dimension there. So, my website seems like the perfect space: it is private enough for me to post without much forethought. At the same time, its public nature ensures people who access it are likely to be interested in me.

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I have been fairly skeptical about a symbolic public gesture that stems from your personal opinions unless they are well thought out. For example, stickers on your laptop that show that you are strongly attracted to a cause. I would think of artists as people who have done the due diligence to understand their emotions before embarking on their projects. After all, you wouldn’t give tens or hundreds of hours of your time to a cause you don’t strongly believe in, right? And stickers on your laptop can even be counterproductive – you can become complacent since you did a morally charged ‘action’; you would feel like you accomplished something, making it just a little bit more comfortable with not taking an action in a different time where it is more important.
Well, I was recently in Boston, trotting along with my friends to sample a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class. At a corner, I walked across a shop that had an LGBTQ+ flag painted on a wall, with words along the lines of “Love is Love.” Any other day, I would have scoffed and said “But why? What does that do?” But I realized that the wall made me feel [unexpectedly, unconsciously] comfortable, despite being cisgender heterosexual.

Maybe the potential of making someone else feel the same is reason enough to put that sticker on the laptop.

 

Format
Having decided that I wanted to express myself, next, I needed to figure out the format. I wanted something that is succinct enough for me to view everything I have created at a lower resolution – not unlike the tiling of photos Instagram provides – while not limiting me on the nature of what I create – long blogs and short videos should get their due attention. I think I have come to a solution that I am fairly happy about — a non-grid-like tiling system, with an image working as an icon for each entry!

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For texts of any kind, I have come up with an interesting idea – I will write a list of [synonyms, descriptions, adjectives] of [words, phrases] in brackets to deal with the [eternal, anguishing] search for apt words. I will use it as a tool wherever appropriate. I am quite excited about it!

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Till I type again,

Yugantar