This Time Is Different

I'm reviving all of my old blogs today.

I'm going to start posting regularly again and linking people to my thoughts and cross-connecting a bunch of different blogs and platforms to each other.

I've meant to do this in the past, but this time it's actually different.

It's different for two reasons.

First of all, I'm happy and motivated. I've never felt this way in my life until this month.

I'm able to get things done; I've written on average more than one song a day for the past few weeks. That's going to inevitably slow as I run out of rhymes that I'm looking for a way to use. But it's not going to dry up completely.

Secondly, I have money and time, now. I have time because I have money. I don't need to sacrifice my ability to live my own life anymore to society in order to survive on my own. I have my own place with a room with a view, which is what everyone needs to be truly productive and comfortable to write, man, woman, or child. (One doesn't need to be truly alone, but one does need to be away from all of the doubting voices.)

Thirdly, I have a path towards turning all of this into more of a platform now. I have expertise in things that are far more applied than I did at the time I started writing these things, and far more evidence that I know what I think I know. I no longer feel like an arrogant fool to doubt the efficient market hypothesis. I know for sure it is false, and I feel like I have good reason to believe that my stock-picking ability significantly outperforms random chance.

I've read far more books that I think I should review, and can now survey them from the perspective of completion much more often than I could have five years ago.

Portrait of an Artist makes more sense in the context of the rest of Joyce's work than it did on its own. I can give it that context. When I review science fiction, I'm now doing so from the perspective of having read the majority of the novels that were ever given a Hugo award, and it won't be much longer until I've read all of them. I don't feel like an impostor at all anymore. I feel like I've paid my dues, and done my research, and in doing so have earned the right to speak.

Fourthly, I'm sure I have a path towards turning all of what I'm doing into a way to make a living. I can join Amazon's affiliate program and put links to it in all of my book reviews, and reviews of other products. I can use my writing to help me find work that I'm actually interested in doing as a consultant who is helping people to improve their business and their corporate culture.

All of this is exciting to me. All of this feels to me like it will keep getting better for the foreseeable future. I don't expect anyone to read everything I write. I'm not trying to have that happen. I'm just trying to throw all of my knowledge and all of my skills and all of my thoughts out into the world and give them a chance to stick, and I'm pretty sure it will be possible for me to find ways of making that happen.