Day three

Today’s small bite: start a blog, and post up my observations about my small bites each day. Why? Why do I want to offer up my most private thoughts to…whoever it is that’s out there reading them? First, it gives me a place to document and organize my thoughts. Second, I (hope I) will feel a greater sense to commitment to my project by creating something tangible around it. Third, who knows? – maybe people who are interested will come along, read it and give me some useful tips, or laugh at me – both of which I could use right now.

This is not my first attempt at starting a blog. I started one a few years ago, about free things to do in New York City. I posted twice that weekend, got busy again the following week and forgot all about it. Then I watched the movie “Julie and Julia”, where Amy Adams (sorry, I know that’s not the right name, but it is the only ones that comes to mind) blogs her way through the Julia Child cookbook to a glamorous career, fame and a Hollywood movie contract; and from then on have felt resistance to the idea of ever starting a blog. There was something gimmicky about it in that movie, and in my mind ever since. Everybody is doing it now. There is even a name for it – “stunt non-fiction” - it has become a genre! Go live in an ashram for a year, and blog about it, and so on and so forth. I am too cool to jump onto this particular bandwagon, that’s me.

And then a strange thought presented itself: a big chunk of things I am afraid to do because only a few people do them - apply to the NSF for a CAREER grant, for example; or throw away a job that pays an insane amount of money, gives me tremendous flexibility and is intellectually rewarding, because I don’t feel like it is making enough of a difference (god alone knows what I mean by that). Another big chunk of things I don’t want to do because too many people do them – like start a blog. This leaves me with – not that much. Exactly the reason why I started this project, except that I wasn’t thinking about it precisely this way. And remember yesterday’s lesson: doing something stupid is better than thinking something brilliant.

So hello, world.