init blog

I suppose this is my first blog post!

As I finished typing that sentence, I realize there are a million different directions I want to take this in, and so I think what I'm going to do is take it in all of those directions. That means that every post I make will not be educational but will instead be my ramblings about whatever is on my mind that week. In that way, this is more of a public journal rather than a blog (though that raises the question: what is a blog, then?)

The purpose of this website is to serve as a knowledge base for myself that I can access from anywhere with internet access. With that, I expect to "write" about anything from technology to politics; from engineering to psychology. None of it from the perspective of an expert, but from the perspective of a layman. Just a guy with an interest in a ton of things that struggles to keep track of it all. With all of this being said, what is on my mind today?

It really is that damn phone...

This is something I'd like to dedicate a whole post to at some point. I have all these goals and all these planned projects, and yet I can barely find the time or the "headspace" to work on them. When I first think about why, the answer I immediately come up with is that there are only so many hours in a day, and that work, sleep, and all the adjacent activities take up most of them. While this is true, this cannot possibly be the sole culprit because so many other people are able to do what they want to do outside of work, sometimes with time to spare.

The humbling answer is that I spend way too much time on my phone, and even lately that I've gotten better at not "doom-scrolling" any time I am not partaking in an activity that doesn't require my undivided attention, I find that I have an undying urge to listen or watch something in the background of any activity that does require my undivided attention.

I can tell that all of this excessive phone and social media use is taking a toll on my attention span and my productivity. I recognize the criticism of "grind culture" and chasing productivity as a result of our capitalist economy, but this isn't the productivity I mean (though admittedly this issue does get in the way of my job work sometimes). I'm struggling to do the things that I want to do in my free-time. Imagine all the willpower I had to muster to get this post started.

If there's anything I learned from college, it is that inertia is everything, and all it takes to keep going is to get started. My hope is that typing and publishing this post will be the catalyst for all my other projects. That isn't much of a strategy, but I think I will figure out all the kinks with time.

My political arc.

One of the projects I have planned is getting educated in American politics, government, and history. Though I've always been interested in politics and I've always enjoyed getting into arguments with people, I have almost always admittedly argued talking points and not original thoughts. If you're someone who "lives in the internet", you'll probably call this "debate brain", and I think it's an accurate description of how I've argued 75% of the time. Especially in the last 2 to 4 years though, I have made a concerted effort to argue in good faith, committing to engage in an exchange of ideas rather than a competition to make the other person look dumb. Despite this effort, I am uneducated on several of the most contentious issues and therefore get the urge to fall back on talking points I've heard that I don't even know if I really believe.

Donald Trump won the presidency just last week and never before have I felt more invigorated to be educated. Of course, I know some things, and those things I do know in combination with the things I have heard from people like streamer Destiny and the people he debates are what formed my strong opinions against another Trump presidency. But I don't want to be a product of what I hear. To learn anything requires some amount of trust in the source, but there is a point in which all you're learning is talking points and not facts.

I am almost certain that after becoming significantly more educated than I am now, I will still be very anti-Trump -- from where I see it now, you've got to be either seriously prejudicial or seriously misinformed to have voted for Trump. The little facts that I do know make that choice obvious. But I do understand that I must take care to not learn with the goal of arriving at my current conclusion and instead to have the flexibility (the neuroplasticity, if you will) to alter my positions.

Closing thoughts.

Ultimately, this website is all about learning. Learning about politics, learning about programming, learning about civil engineering, learning about urban planning, learning about myself, learning how to write... I could go on. I probably won't be able to stand reading this in the future, and that's totally fine, because that will mean that I have progressed.