starting out

For the last few years, I've been a bit rudderless. Drifting from random thought or urge to random thought. I think I've always been this way to some degree - I've never really had a strong feeling for what I should be doing, or even what I'd like to do. In fact, even questioning myself along those lines has seemed... too hard.

But I'm recognising now, slowly, that if I want to make the most of my life, then I need to practice thinking, writing and ultimately maybe finding some answers to those future oriented questions. At the very least, not being afraid or overwhelmed when I'm called to think about them.

At the moment, I'm not sure that I have much of a strategy for building this capacity. There are people whose abilities in this regard really impress me - Sacha Chua, Michael Nielsen, my brother. But I don't know what it is that they have in common, aside from a degree of courage that I'm yet to develop.

I guess that's often it for me... I'm terrified of being "wrong". So terrified that I cut myself off before I try. But I think that fear arrives because I have trouble visualising what an experience might be like - "What would it be like for me to do this thing?"

So that's really what I want to do here. Learn to imagine the future; make it tangible and believable. Be willing to try out strange thoughts. Connect up dots; fill in colours; shade in nuances and find out what really motivates me.

I know this can make a huge difference - for me, that is most obvious when I look at how I've changed as a public speaker over the 4 years of my phd. That's one field where I really can envision what a situation might be like. Where the problems might be. What it would be like to succeed wildly! And it's invigorating! Energising! Exciting! I still get stressed about planning and preparing talks, but it's a lot more fun than it used to be, and every time I speak, I can feel myself improving.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to do that with everything? To have that drive for continual learning and evolution? That's the feeling I want to foster. I'm sure I can do it, too!

And to learn to write clearly, powerfully, and deeply. To make thoughts and ideas live. For words to really become my close friends, rather than somewhat frightening, unruly adolescents that I feel I have to batter into sentences. I give up trying to say what I want to say because I get frightened of the words.

I want to use this space to revisit ideas and themes that I haven't fully explored. To keep track of how my thinking develops. To probe what my thoughts really mean to me. Do I believe them? If not, what do I believe?

There are heaps of things going on that excite me: all the crazy churning of the internet for one. Or the localisation and food-sovereignty movement for another. I want to find my place in the world, and add my voice, and my back, and my thoughts to wherever it is we are all going next. I'm sure I have more to offer than I have managed so far. What it takes is courage to get it out there.