A must-read

My friend #####'s not-quite-a-blog. Snippety peeks into the mind (and soul) of a literary prince, with an archive dating back to before there were blogs.

WARNING: Proceed with caution, especially if you have work to do. As with PhDComics / Dilbert / etc., it's very hard to resist clicking <Next> (or <Previous>) "just one more time!"

Balance and Peace

My friend Jeff Chow has been hiking the Appalachian Trail, and has been maintaining a multimedia-rich blog for well-wishers and curious gawkers (like myself) to share in his experiences. In one of his recent posts, he posed the following question:

"If you believe that one should accept oneself as you are and also believe that one should try to continue to grow and improve oneself, how do you balance the two ideas?"

I responded with:

Accept yourself for the person you are, with the “person you are” being something (someone) that *contains* the *potential* to be much more than you are right now. There’s untapped potential in you, that isn’t being expressed yet. Becoming aware of and tapping and utilizing that potential = growth. If you can look back on your past and say to yourself - “I did the best that I could have done, under the circumstances”, then that’s the best you can be, and that’s all you need to accept.

... I think. ;)

Figured I'd include it here on my own blog as well. :)

Btw, check out an excellently produced slideshow (with audio overlay) about the AT called `An Enduring Journey', published by the Minneapolis StarTribune and featuring JeffC himself, here. (Requires the Adobe Flash player to be installed on your computer.)

More on blogs

Florist asks (asked) similar questions, and expresses similar sentiments, here and here.

And Satya responds, succintly, so:

My blog is a place for me to get thoughts onto "paper". In the absence of a blog, I'd be bugging people with the same stuff, in real time (which is precious), and repeating myself (did I remember to tell you...?). It's also a place to leave notes for myself -- the future me, whether next day or next decade. Of course, I could email notes to myself instead, but, as with the Rails stuff, it's out there for the googling lost programmer to find.

And, of course, fame and fortune.

[2007.08.01] And pithier yet, from the usb-port: here.

On 'blogs

I do a lot of my thinking while I'm in the shower, and during my most recent one (see my previous post), the topic-of-the-moment was 'blogs' -- why do we keep them? What's their purpose? Why am I keeping one? (Not very surprising, considering that I had created my first blog just a few hours ago.) One (obvious) line of thought is that this is our (where 'we' = children of the Digital/Internet Age) personal pulpit, an opportunity to tell the entire world what we think, and (hopefully) make our presence felt. (Clearly, a 21st-century evolution of the personal webpages on geocities / tripod / angelfire / university servers that spread like wildfire back when the 'Web was young.) This has shades of commonality with the publish-or-perish philosophy in the research/academic world -- which I was reminded of while reading a fellow grad-student's blog post earlier today. If you do not publish, you effectively do not exist. Blogito, ergo sum.

But, is anyone really listening? In the short while since starting this blog, I've been tempted to write down every inane little thought that I've had -- like this one, for example. Does that not reek of hubris, to believe that the world cares about things like that? I'm not saying that they're not significant, but that they're only significant to people to whom I'm already close, and I would typically only mention them to those people in a personal conversation. A web-log isn't the place for such things, is it?

And, speaking of personal conversations, I'm a strong believer in the importance of face-to-face communication, with all its subtle nuances of body language and the training it gives you in proper social intercourse/etiquette. Telephone conversations and the written word (letters, e-mail, Instant Messaging, Bulletin-Board Systems / Internet forums) are useful and necessary, but they're already a step away. The more we use -- and rely on -- the Internet and related technology to interact with the rest of the world (from blogs and social-networking websites to the innocuousness of news and e-commerce/web-merchant websites), the more we seem to be losing that personal touch, and actually distancing ourselves from the rest of the world, retreating into shells which only we inhabit and where, to a large extent, only our feelings matter. It's easier to disregard another person when they're not physically standing right in front of you. (An IM conversation with ChrissyNB earlier today reminded me of this paradox of the Internet Age.) But, coming back to blogs and personal conversations about `little' things: When I voice such thoughts out aloud, I expect a response. I want a response -- that's why I mentioned that thing to that person (or persons). And a personal conversation, whether face-to-face, or via a telephone or IM, (usually) gives me that gratification. A web-log would not - there's no guarantee of a response, and most definitely not an immediate one. So I can see myself quickly tiring of this exercise if I let that -- the sharing of my thoughts with the world -- be the its principal/sole raison d'etre. (I already have/use e-mail as a medium for pushing that sort of information to people whom I know would be interested in it, so I don't need a blog for that purpose. If this blog evolves to subsume that functionality, and performs it in a more efficient manner, then that's just dandy, of course.)

Which brings me back, full-circle, to the comments of my very first post: Is the primary purpose of a blog to be -- for me, at least -- more like a personal diary? A collection of writings with myself as the primary intended audience? Yet, this is a public space, with the secondary (?) purpose of allowing others to weigh in on my thoughts as well... if they care to! A blog is not at all an incarnation (however diluted) of the traditional social interaction, yet neither is it the place to jot down notes to myself that are too personal to share with others. It's a strange sort of hybrid of the two, retaining some of their functionalities while also, unfortunately, losing their others. The real question -- to me -- is: Is it worth it? Is having one (or two) tilt-rotor(s) better than having one aeroplane and one helicopter? ;)

Hot baths

I love 'em. (And when I say `bath', I mean a `shower', it being more closely aligned in meaning to the Indian usage of the term -- an activity involving a bucket of water and a mug, and pouring that water over yourself one mug-full at a time -- than to the Western meaning of immersing yourself from the neck down in a bath-tub of water.) Cold-water baths are fun too, and they definitely have their place, but by and large, I much prefer the hot kind. I just had one, and I am a happy camper. :)

Life goes on

I tend to dwell in the past a lot. Re-living events from days, weeks, months, years ago. Times of happiness, times of sadness. Which, in and of itself, is not a useless or deplorable activity, but of late I've come to realize that I perhaps do it too much, and that is a bad thing. I need to learn to do less of that, and instead, more of looking to -- and planning for, and being excited about the possibilities that lie in -- the future.

Anyway. I heard something just the other day while watching, of all things, an episode of Magnum, P.I., that struck me as something I should keep tucked away for 'ready reference' in those times when bad, painful things happen: "Life goes on."

I am part of the Blogiverse

I have arrived. More accurately, I am now -- I suppose -- ready to make my presence known. Have resisted doing this for quite some time, despite repeated urgings from friends and acquaintances ("Dude, you should start a blog!", and variations on the theme). After all, I am but a minor particle in this vast etherspace. Would other particles really care to be affected by, or interact with, the fluctuations in my local field?

Oh well. I suppose I could consider this an experiment in quantum human-o social-o dynamics. Mostly, really, for now it's just a way for me to collect and archive my thoughts -- things simultaneously ponderous (to me, at least) and ephemeral. My memory is too fickle to retain all that I want it to. And if, in consequence, other neurons on this World-Wide Web happen to network with mine, then -- oh, happy day!

... Time to let this bubble rise to the surface of the Blogsphere. :)