So it turns out that not only do I have well known issues with procrastination, but I also have difficulty organizing my thoughts. So it has now been going on five months since I created this blog and have yet to make a second post.
There are a couple of things that have slowed me down.
One is that a good bit of what I have to say ranges from peeves and gripes to full on rants. It occurs to me that if I indulge that too much I'm going to turn into Andy Rooney, just starting with "what are you thinking" instead of "Did you ever notice". Even as a self proclaimed grumpy old man I'd like to manage a little more dimension than that.
Another is trying to decide where to start. It seems as if everything I want to discuss has a prerequisite topic and those need background and it either becomes circular or I have to start with "What's the meaning of life?". At one point I considered writing about that under the title of
"The unbearable interconnectedness of ideas".
I'm pretty sure that I never promised anything about my blog not being pretentious and self indulgent which is probably a good thing.
Pretentious title aside the basic point is that I it's hard for me talk about politics without getting into history and socioeconomic topics, or intellectual property without getting into the history of how information is disseminated, or "family values" without including the purpose of the family unit. Phrased like that it may not sound so unreasonable, but when it comes to specific topics such as student loan financing and mortgage financing I can't talk about those without getting into personal responsibility and accountability. I can't talk about the national debt or deficit without talking about US history. If people start throwing statistics around I want to know the research and methodology that produced them before I discuss what they mean. It doesn't take long before I'm accused of changing the topic or wanting to debate theory instead of reality. What I think of as context others call irrelevant tangents.
I suppose this is where I start to digress into a longing for rational discourse and all that entails. Differentiating between supportable fact, speculation and opinion. Allowing for the possibility of revising an opinion. Allowing for the possibility of finding a position that you can't support objectively, but that you also aren't going to change and acknowledging that it is a belief, not a universal truth.
Finally there is this little short term memory problem. I seems like I always think of my best ideas when I'm someplace that I can't write them down. By the time I get home I've forgotten the details if not the whole idea. I think there is something about road rage that makes me wax philosophical. Or maybe I wax philosophical to distract myself from the road rage.
Having said all that hopefully I'll be able to pick a topic and make a start on it.
