Blog Update: Why so many posts today?

by phil on Saturday Jan 10, 2009 3:52 PM
going really meta about this, off-front

I debated putting this out there.

On the one hand, I've sort of put aside, at least a year ago, crazy frenzy posting as a rule, simply because I'd do it for one day, and then stop. Usually the crazy volume would be prompted by a new way of thinking about my blog. For example, I had an idea once that, "what if I made my site like Kottke.org." When I got that idea in my head, I posted like crazy for a day, thinking I had found my format. Somehow I believe I can really aid the explosure [neo-sic] of this site if I just find the right format. Oh, an even better example are the 12 posts I made over a week on secular religion. That idea was based the notion, "well, what if I stuck to one topic, pre-set the length of each post (between 1 and 5 paragraphs)" The idea was that I could somehow compile everything together and bind it like a book, a la Nietzsche's Gay Science (yeah yeah, how dare I compare myself to the great Nietzsche).

In the mean time, over the past two years or so, I've abandoned certain kinds of posts, in particular, posts like this one. The point of that process was an idea, "what if I slowly evolved my blog, and maybe 5-10 years from now, it really takes off." Clearly the subtext in all of this is an embarrassingly intense desire for success channeled in a way that would contradict my tech-start-up pedigree.

Also, there's a fear that whenever I do these things, I look back a couple days later, and think, "yet another abandoned epiphany." It almost looks like clinical logorrhea, where I'm having some sort of neurosis-inspired talkativity [sic]. I might be. Actually, I feel fine and I'm sort of relishing dancing this psychotic-looking dance.

So, sorry to drag you through so many digressions. What's behind the frenzy today?

The Purpose-Driven Life.

When reading that book and reading Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, the question always lurking in the back of your mind is, "Well, what's the author's damned purpose!" Clearly, both their purposes is to help others find purpose. How convenient.

So, I'll quit beating around the bush, and tell you what purpose I decided I'm here for: change people's lives, inspire people, open eyes, awaken people, move them, create epiphanies.... to the best of my abilities.

And I committed that purpose to writing a couple days ago, and the whole idea has been recycling in my head like a broken record. I've been repeating a mantra in my head at least a thousand times, "I'm here to inspire others, to change lives!" It's very loud, so much so that I feel a little disassociated from myself.

In the process, I've come up with different directions for this site that have me extremely inspired, as inspired as I felt when I first started writing.

Having said that. I really hope I don't look back at this post a couple weeks from now and think to myself, "ah geez, yet another false-start epiphany." But alas, it does take some courage to go ahead anyways and post this, commit it to the public. I mean, part of the plan is to let myself write in this kind of manner, rather than in my wannabe New Yorker, professionalish voice.