Transmission From the Planet Balckwell

August 31, 2023

I don’t really have anything to say at the moment. A few ideas have been circulating about in my head recently, but I don’t feel particularly compelled to share them in their current state. They’re all a little thin, and not yet fully thought out.

With all the smoke and the heat, combined with the unsettling process of applying for, getting, and starting a new part-time job, combined with planning for a significant trip across the world, I find it quite difficult to think in a straight line lately.

It’s true that I don’t think in a straight line even at the best of times. I tend toward circular thinking, forming an unstable orbit around an idea until its gravity pulls me into its grasp. This interstellar route takes the form of an Essay, with the conclusion occurring at the moment when I crash land directly into the surface of the Idea. Sometimes, I remember to pull the parachute in time; sometimes I don’t.

That’s the ideal scenario. The other scenario is one in which I fly toward the Idea at such an extreme velocity that I slingshot around in a parabolic escape orbit and end up hurtling into the outer reaches of space, where I slowly but surely run out of oxygen. Sometimes, I find myself in an asteroid belt, surrounded by confused and uninteresting ideas that I don’t really care about, with no conceivable means of returning to that first nebulous Idea I had once been orbiting.

When that happens, we don’t get an essay, either because I hit a dead end, or because I find myself accidentally writing about something I don’t care about, at which point I stand up and yell, “I don’t care!”

If I don’t care, there’s no way any of you are going to care. And this leads to our second problem. The first problem can be paraphrased like this: “I don’t have an idea.” The second problem is more like: “I don’t care to tell anyone about my idea.”

Writing necessarily involves a desire to communicate with and influence others. I don’t mean “influence” in a subversive or authoritarian sense; I simply mean the intention to impact the audience in some manner. I might want to tell you about an idea with the hope that it will benefit your life. I might be sharing information, or a new way of thinking. I may want to tell you about an idea because I’m angry at other people for having a different idea, and I want to destroy their idea with my idea. And sometimes I just write to remind everyone that I still exist.

Whatever the case, these motives form the “passion” behind the essays. This passion is the limiting factor here, because it is the fuel I convert into the energy required to think it all through and type it all out. Without that, I just bounce around between idle thoughts and sentiments I picked up from books, and we get nowhere. It’s just noise.

I actually value your attention quite highly, far too highly to waste it on anything I don’t strongly believe is worth saying. I’m driven by what Lemuel Gulliver might call the “publick Good,” although how any of this leads to that is a little unclear.

Maybe we sometimes disagree about what exactly is worth saying. That’s bound to happen. I probably publish essays here that you think I probably could’ve kept to myself. I probably also keep essays to myself that you might think are worth publishing on here! That’s just the way it goes.

All I can promise is that I don’t put anything on here unless I consider it at least somewhat meaningful, and unless I feel that I have put all I have into expressing it in as interesting and comprehensible a form as possible. I know that standards are low on the internet in this respect, as it is primarily a dumping ground for unfinished thoughts and gut reactions. Most posts online are the equivalent of when I bonk my head on a cabinet door and think, “Who the hell put that cabinet there?” Even if I did the research and answered the question, it wouldn’t provide much insight into the event. It’s just not a particularly interesting line of questioning. If I take the time to reflect, I might instead hit (or bonk) upon some more legitimate line of questioning, which might lead to an idea worth sharing with the world.

Obviously, in that particular case I might also not.

All this to say that sometimes there’s a little bit too much smoke in the air and confusion in the brain to provide you with a truly compelling essay, and I’m not about to force anything. That being said, it is Wednesday, and I did promise myself that I would update this website every other Thursday. So, while other, stronger essays continue to percolate, we’ll have to make do with this.

This has been your biweekly transmission from the Planet Balckwell.