I don’t exactly know what to write.
Not for lack of ideas. I took a 3 month (I originally wrote “6 month” then checked and realized it was only 3. I’m bad with time.) leave of absence from daily blogging. It was really good and gave me perspective. But it was hard too. The daily catharsis has become so much a part of my life that when I choose to desist it takes work to adjust.
So I have several topics stored up, most of which I feel will require lengthier posts, or perhaps a series of posts, to think about. And that is what writing is for me most of the time. Thinking. I rarely think through an idea and then spend time putting it into the proper words. Instead, I start writing and use the process to pull dormant ideas out of my head and onto the page. The writing process is the thinking process in these times.
That’s why I like daily blogging. If I’m writing less frequently, or for a third-party publication, or a piece for Crash, it’s got to have a clear point and purpose going in. It’s not really fair to the reader to think out-loud in that context.
But my own personal daily blog? That’s for me. I write because it changes me. So here I am, thinking out loud to you once again. It feels good.
Daily blogging has changed my life many times. My relationship to writing is one of the most important relationships in my life, because it is a proxy for my relationship to myself. I’m excited to enter back in to daily writing and let it transform me and do its alchemy.
2020 is a big year for me. I’m not going to get into too much detail here, because I think it will be the focus of my Friday newsletter this week, but I have hit a clear and distinct transition in my life. I am beginning a second life. A second act. Or as Venkatesh Rao calls it, an Elder Game.
A lot changed in 2019. Exoteric change yes, but mostly esoteric change. Changes within myself kept hidden even from me until I begin the process of uncovering exactly what’s going on and in what ways I’m transforming into a new creature. This thrills me. If there’s one thing I hate it’s sameness and boredom. If there’s one thing I love it’s change and growth. I do not like to be shackled to past expectations, emotions, identities, and experiences. I like freedom. And freedom means change.
So here I am, hammering out the first in my next sequence of daily posts on the first level in my second life.
More to come. Happy new year.