hi.
first, some context: I'm wrapping up my first semester back in school after three years of working. I’m currently riding the high of the past three months: navigating transitions, joys (truly, it has been so joyous) of being back in school, and the growth paints of my brain needing to stretch in so many ways.
I experienced taking ideas into thoughts by continuously alternating between messy mind maps, brain dumps, and then writing linearly. apparently, you can’t just say you’re a visual thinker and call it a day.
and so here we are.
a few goals for this project:
reason #1: developing different muscles of writing
a big mindset shift this semester has been distinguishing between writing to think and writing to communicate. even after I moved past submitting my first draft in high school, I think I had always been somewhere In the middle. recognizing that I can just write to think has taken off a lot of pressure that writing brings me, while understanding that writing to communicate (not that all writing has to!) requires not just some purpose but also an audience has made me a more precise writer. relatedly, how you choose to organize information and knowledge, much less communicate them, is an argument itself.
I've been able to work through my my own version of this 90-minute lecture that I was assigned at the start of my semester. for now, I just work through continuous iterations with the goal of moving from one for the other. but I am terrible about shifting gears (my brain pretty much only has one singular track), working through even more final versions always point to holes or lead to new thoughts. for now, my goal Is to develop them as separate skills.
writing was my biggest nightmare growing up, but being in school has forced me to lower the activation energy required to get going. and so my goal is to maintain the momentum by starting this now. (may the cost of the website subscription keep me accountable.)
I picked up a habit of reading more regularly in college, much in thanks to a class that involved reading and engaging with a (contemporary!) book a week, extra time from a cancelled semester abroad & summer internship, and a slight rush of validation from posting the books I read on social media (oops). even if it hasn’t been as consistent since, it's mostly a matter of resuming, not starting, the habit.
and so, just as I started to understand different functions and purposes of reading (to feel, to lose myself in a world, to be inspired, to learn something), I want to learn how to write (to think and to communicate, but also to identify the gaps, to build an argument, etc.)
and then, reason #2: going from thinking to having thoughts
I always have these random musings or sparks of ideas without a formal opportunity to work through it. and so for someone whose brain won't turn off, I don’t seem to have many thoughts, or at least nothing fully formed. no matter how comprehensive something seems in my head, I’m a solid 6 (not necessarily empty, and more a loud, chaotic abyss) on the apple image scale.
given that I work through my thoughts by talking out loud, I'm not sure why it took so long to realize writing would be a powerful tool to develop my thoughts. maybe I just never want to... better late than never, I guess. for now, I don’t think I necessarily want to become a 1, but I want to have more than just ~concepts~ of thoughts.
learning that the form I’m writing in doesn’t just inform how I present the information, but also the actual thoughts that come out of the process. this realization led to another (lol, what’s new) that just writing in academic contexts would constrain my thinking. I don’t necessarily think conventions or standards are a bad thing–it’s easier for a reader when they don’t have to navigate both the content and the order of the logic. so beyond just developing thoughts, I also hope that different types of writing will help me develop different voices.
so, where is this going?
an earlier draft became somewhat of an existential crisis about the purpose of writing. a short excerpt of what I think should remain an in-between stage of working through my thoughts:
reflecting on some of my submissions this semester, I realize that there were moments when I included something just to show that I was able to or to prove that I had thought about something, even if it no longer served a purpose in the overall argument/narrative. is this–the hyperawareness of the audience, in this case a particular professor–the downfall of writing for an audience? or perhaps even when I thought I was writing for a purpose, it was still self-satisfactory and not truly for that person? but if I’m trying to make an argument, isn’t it inherently still self-satisfactory?
for now, I’ve landed on being ok with the very self-satisfactory nature of this project and just being grateful that I’ve always had people who are not only willing to entertain my self-satisfactory musings (via voice memos, incoherent essay-length collections of texts, existential conversations at all times of the day) and that I have people–hi, friend–who I can send this to. and so, this is my love letter to you all.
please please please let me know of your thoughts so that these become the starts of conversations with you all, whether that happens on texts/voice memos/in-person conversations (or if anyone also wants to write on here? how fun would that be!)
with all that said... a non-comprehensive, non-final list of some things I'd love to write (with wip names because my brain craves a system (more to come on that, some day):
- a slightly developed version of some reflections & realizations that usually come to you all In the form of a brain dump (musings)
- outputs from very casual, short research efforts in a more traditional sense just to entertain random connections and thoughts I have... right now I have: gentrification(?) by children of immigrants, podcasts and the generalized other, and Japanese trading companies in relation to “The Stranger” by Georg Simmel (I love and also want to hurl at this list) (maybe I’ll borrow language from school and call them memos?)
- syntheses of things I learn both from proper books and wikipedia rabbit holes as I play catch up on social science, academia, and apparently just life in general (progress reports)
- random things I’ve learned (via class, twitter, youtube essay videos, tiktok, books) and then forming a response, rather than just reacting. (thankfully I have stopped hiding behind the “I read the other day….” bs and will fully admit to taking things from social media, but I do think I have space to actually engage with it all a bit more, even if it’s just to retain the information I’m learning) (show & tell?)
- any coherent thoughts that emerge from working through more existential crises... like whether academic writing is actually scholarship if it is impossible to understand, etc. (not sure what to call these… soap-box moments? cry for help?)
I alternated between being very motivated to start this and also being kind of embarrassed, but I think I need to bite the bullet. and I figured there is something to be said about doing so before we enter a new quarter of the century.
thank you for being here <3