Under normal circumstances, I probably would have fired off at least one blog in the last month — being that there is so much worth writing about that’s directly in my wheelhouse. I could have written about the first of the Democratic Primary debates; I could have written about the Raptors beating the all-time great (yet extremely depleted) Warriors in the NBA Finals; I could have written about the historic and crazy free agency period that’s subsequently transpired; any one of those items would have been good for a thousand words or two.
I haven’t been writing because I haven’t had the juice to write. It’s nothing newsworthy. It’s not like I’ve been sick or depressed, it isn’t like I haven’t had the time to do it, and truth be told it doesn’t feel like a usual block, or lack of motivation. I’ve started a few, and gone pretty deep on one or two of them, but when the time came to post I just felt like too much time had gone by, and it either didn’t feel relevant or I didn’t really care anymore about the topic.
Earlier I was driving home from the desert, and I was listening to John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band. I don’t mention that to sound deep or interesting; it’s just what I was listening to. And while I was listening I thought about what it was like the first time I got into Lennon, back when I was 20 or 21 (in 2010/’11). And I thought about the shit I used to post publicly — whether it be on my Xanga blog or on Facebook — and how juvenile it must’ve sounded.
Part of what’s cool about being 29 is that I’m both (a) young enough to know how to use all the new technology and social media sites, while (b) being old enough to have worked out most of the kinks in how I want to use it. The most important lesson to be learned from sites like Facebook and Instagram (and Myspace before them) is a little self-awareness. At some point the realization needs to hit you that most people don’t really give a damn about your life. That’s real. And maybe you have to post emo song lyrics, or selfies, or offer numerous updates on the mundane events happening in your life, to learn that lesson.
So if you know my blog then you probably know where I’m going with this. At age-20 or 21 my life experience was still fairly limited, and so naturally my blog was pretty crude. I spent the bulk of my time romanticizing the ordinary life of a routine 20 or 21-year old, talking about my feelings, and killing time on sports and pretending to have a voice on popular culture. I knew so little about so much that I didn’t have a very firm grasp on anything that I wrote about.
At age-29 my life is different, but it’s still kind of the same thing. I have less things that I write about, but because my interests are concentrated I think it’s fair to say that I do have a decent grasp on the subject matter. If I don’t feel like I know what I’m writing about, then I’m just not going to write it.
I try to see the future, but ten years ago I had no idea that what I was saying was so selfish and childish and really didn’t mean anything to anyone other than me. I wrote it because it felt important. And though I do think what I write about now — notably leftist economics — has more staying power than some random bullshit about why the universe has it out for me, it’s not lost on me that what I choose to write about now could also have a shelf life.
I guess the point is this: if what I was interested in sharing as a 20 year-old doesn’t mean anything to me now, as a 29 year-old, and what I’m interested in now as a 29 year-old won’t mean anything to me when I’m 39, for argument’s sake, then what is the point of feeling strongly about anything?
My blog is my blog, so this question will have no choice but to be answered at some later date. While I don’t exactly envision myself as someone who will wake up in five years and say to myself, you know what, to hell with everything I’m just going to be a Republican, it won’t surprise me if I look back and laugh at how much I believed a better world was possible.
Future Bets 