New Life In the Old Pond
Opening up after having shut down – the cycle of life
After a few days of downtime, thinking about life and the meaning of it all, including writing, Substack, and the millions of consumers of the writing, I ended up trying out something I had been considering.
It has now resulted in a few new Substacks, each focused on a topic.
So, you can pick the topics you are interested in and subscribe to them individually – isn’t that just as flexible as it gets? ;)
Some of you will know from my writing so far, that I tend to mix two opposite trends in my writing:
Being brave and bold and talking about what I think matters
Hiding some of the deeper meaning between the lines
This is me, sorry. I think and write this way.
Telling all the details straight out often scares away people who don’t agree, no matter what it is about. The wish to learn new things is not strong with most people – they like the known space more than the new and untested territory.
But convoluting everything in clichés and politeness isn’t very satisfactory for the one who feels that he has something to tell. Because, telling requires that someone is listening, and preferably also understanding, otherwise telling makes no sense.
The new Substacks help a bit on this, in that I will be more straight in my message, which will always be about the one topic of that Substack, but also more experimenting by adding some thinking that is not fully developed yet, essentially asking you for your help to bring it into a state where it is good and useful.
I ask for active listening. This is not TV. I am not making movies. I am talking to people, hoping for them to respond.
Of course, I know that I’m just a chicken, believing he can fly, and that may look pathetic at times. “Who does he think he is? Why not just stick to the proven topics, those that do not cause a conflict. And then putting pictures of flowers on the articles. I like flowers!”
Well, there are millions of such articles. For whatever reason, people never read the older ones, only what has been published just now, but they could, just as well, read the old ones if they want all the old stuff served over and over again.
On the other hand, even when trying to write about new thoughts, I am perfectly aware that millions of people before me have thought about the same things. It is really hard to be unique, but it is also unnecessary. The point is that the sweet spot lies in between the cliché articles and the new thoughts, taking in something unknown and trying to treat it by thoughts and words to become a new part of the known, sitting there at the edge of the known land, but becoming more familiar over time.
That others have found that bit of land before me doesn’t change anything, it is still new for me, needing a bit of time, thought, and love to become a true element of the universe as I know it.
That’s the reason for writing about it.
Writing gives me a chance to turn the things around in the head, sometimes several times, and it provides a possibility to bring in other people’s thoughts as well.
I have learned a lesson from the past year, in that I know that I can’t expect anyone to read anything, and that the Notes feature is completely worthless for me, almost never bringing any kind of connection with people, or even just more readers. So, I just post in the new substacks when I want, about what I want, and I understand that 99.999999% of Internet readers don’t care the least about it – most of these being on Notes.
I also understand that nobody ever reads the old articles. As mentioned, I don’t understand why, as they are just as good as the new ones, but that’s just how it is. So everything I write until subscribers start appearing will never be read by anyone.
Nobody ever looks at the front page of the Substack. This time around, I’ll therefore not spend time trying to design it nicely. That would be a complete waste of time.
What a weird place it is, this internet!
The new Substacks are mentioned hereafter, and you are welcome to subscribe to those you are interested in. There are some articles already to start with. Happy reading!
Oh, and the old substacks might get an article now and then as well, if I write something that would fit better there.
Environmentality
About the nature and everything in the part of the universe that affects our lives or provides a frame for us to exist. It is mostly about trees and animals, but also about pollution, energy, and other aspects by which we humans are in touch with the environment, for better or for worse.
I focus on the way we think about it all, hence the title and its hint to mentality. You will probably not see many scientific reports from me here, but rather such articles that emphasize an emotional treatment of this topic, that logically resides in our reptile brain, being totally essential to our survival.
Free World Dream
As it is written on the tin, it is about freedom, all aspects of it, from all over the world, and I am fully aware that freedom often is a dream, only. I want people to convert that dream to a goal, and then to reality. And I believe that we can do that together. Because, as I like to say, freedom must be given, it cannot be taken. If nobody treats us as if we are free, then we aren’t. We must give this to each other.
Factoids
I got tired at one time of the school teacher’ish articles all over the Internet that tried to tell people why it couldn’t be true that the Earth was flat, even though some people claimed that it was, and no, Clint Eastwood isn’t a robot, he is a real human, and here is the evidence…
To me, knowing the world is not about true or false. It is not about debunking myths or revealing lies. It is about using every opportunity to think, and from that, to learn something. And your thoughts are the important ones here, not the school teacher’s.
So, I decided to deal with a bunch of these factoids, truisms, or unscientific thoughts, whatever you prefer to call them, through some short articles that introduce various thoughts about them. You can then, as the reader, continue the thinking and decide what you want to about the factoid itself. Hopefully, your thinking will bring you off track and let you consider something completely different as well.
The Complete World of Music
Some of you have noticed that I am very fond of music. I understand that not everybody is, and having a separate Substack for articles about that topic will therefore be a bliss for those who can then avoid it, and perhaps a pleasure for those who would like to follow it.
I am treating this Substack differently from all others – and in fact, differently from any blog or website I have ever administered before, in that it has a manuscript! All articles will fit into one, big story, covering everything about music, hence the title.
These different articles will not be published in the same order as you would find them in my manuscript, though. I work with many sub-topics in parallel, and I generally publish an article when it is ready, no matter where in the bigger story it fits.
Some day into the future, the date is not set, I hope that all of this together will become a good basis for that book about music, I find missing in the market, and then I will put that book together and publish it.
