Why Blog?

on the purpose of this blog

For the third time in two years, I was struck with the urge to write a non-fiction book. As these things go when I feel inspired, a vision of the book began taking shape in my head: I saw the title, the topics it would cover, the unifying theme and message, the target audience. 

I got excited writing down all of the things that would go in the book, taking little notes, outlining. I knew that in addition to an outline, I needed to put together a sample chapter and a book proposal. Less than two hours into it, I put my pen down…

I’ve been here before.

I know how this ends.

A little over a year ago

The first book idea (that I had somewhat developed) had a very loose, ill-defined topic. The goal then had been to write something about the brain…but what, I wasn’t quite sure. My strategy was to let my interests guide me and let the book develop naturally from that.

I had ended up doing a deep dive into, what I now consider, the most controversial DSM-5 diagnosis—dissociative identity disorder (DID). It’s a fascinating disorder in which a person switches states (or personalities) and each state may have its own distinct memories that cannot be accessed when in other states. 

The disorder itself is very controversial among psychologists. I wanted to know about the neuroscience behind it, but I couldn’t even get a straight answer on whether the disease actually existed as it is most commonly conceptualized. Were people faking it? Or worse, were some clinicians convincing their clients that they had it when they did not?  The disorder is especially controversial because it was associated with the Satanic panic of the 1980s—when children were convinced by psychologists that they were abused by their caregivers when they in fact were not. A lot of people went to prison because of it. I recall reading a chapter in Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World about the whole debacle.

I left those notes on my computer, overwhelmed and discouraged, with the feeling that I couldn’t make sense of the thing. How could I make a judgment when these two groups so strongly disagreed with each other. On one hand, my inclination was to listen and to believe the people that spoke about their personal experiences—even if it was something as extraordinary as DID. But I didn’t feel equipped to make a judgment, let alone to contribute anything meaningful to the conversation. I put my notes aside.

A few months ago

The second book idea that I had somewhat developed would have been called “How to Read”. At the time, I had been reading a lot of Thich Nhat Hahn’s “How to” series of books. How to Focus, How to Eat, How to Sit. I enjoyed his gentle style of writing, and I was being more mindful in general—paying attention to how I was reading—whether I was enjoying it, whether I was really absorbing or reflecting on what I was reading. 

I had a lot of thoughts about reading—the art of reading—enough thoughts, I thought, to fill a whole book. I wrote an outline, jotted down a few paragraphs, thought about making it an article instead of a book, then put it aside forgot about it completely…until now when those thoughts made their debut as a tiny piece of a blog post.

Earlier this week

The third time, I was once again playing with the idea of writing a non-fiction book.  This time, I wanted the topic to be closer to what I wrote about in my dissertation, so I would have a leg up on research. Last Monday morning, I woke up with the title of the book searing in my brain—it would be called “Discontrol: How and why we lose control”. The first two chapters probably would have been about weight management, the biological and then the psychological reasons why people struggle maintaining a healthy weight. I had a chapter in my dissertation about some of the biological reasons. Perfect. I began populating ideas for the other chapters, and I was really looking forward to learning more about those topics and tying them together.

Then, of course, you know what happened next. I realized what I was doing and knew that I would run out of steam once the novelty wore off or I hit a snag. So, I put it aside and started typing this. 

There’s less commitment with a blog post. And it’ll scratch the same itch, won’t it?

Why now?

I’ve tried blogging before, in college. After posting three little articles, I dropped it, lacking the self-discipline. About two months ago, I wrote a little thing that was meant to be a blog post. I showed it to a good friend, but I still felt unready to share it online. 

So, those have been the two things that have been stopping me. Self-discipline and fear. Fear of putting something mediocre out there. Fear of judgment. Fear of vulnerability…of sharing myself.

It feels cringe, to post something online. To hope that it’s interesting, useful, entertaining. Who am I to write something? And I kept telling myself that I don’t have time to write a blog, and I don’t have great ideas, and no one’s going to want to read it anyway. 

And with blogs, I feel like they have very light editing. Every time I reread something I wrote, I want to spend a lot of time getting it right, or I won’t be happy with it. Blogs kind of get you in the habit of getting something out there. Putting yourself in a place of discomfort.  

I recently read some of Ursula K. Le Guin’s blogs. Stylistically, of course, they’re beautiful. The contents, written by someone else, would have been mundane, but written in her voice were lots of fun. My favorite blog post details the adoption of her cat.

If she had time to do it at 80 years old, and could write about whatever, heck so can I. 

Some of my earliest reading material that influenced me as a writer were also from blogs. Bloggers whose names I did not pay attention and no longer remember were common reading material for me in high school. They were easy to find by Googling random words that were interesting to me. There was one name that I did notice and do remember to this day: Eliezer Yudkowsky.

He would write about interesting and fun logical problems. He was probably the first place that I read about the paperclip problem. It’s a mind experiment where you give a superintelligent AI the seemingly harmless task of making paperclips, and it ends with the AI eliminating all life in its pursuit of its goal of making paper clips. Eliezer Yudkowsky didn’t have any training in writing or in logic or math, but he just did it.

That’s the thing about the internet. You don’t need anyone’s permission to share something. You don’t need anyone’s words of approval. All of the cringe and all of the glory (and too much glory can be a bad thing in its own way) is yours. You have to trust yourself to know what’s worth sharing and share it…and wade through whatever reaction (or lack of reaction) you get.

I fear that I have rambled on and went on many tangents, but it is all relevant to the main subject of this post—why I’m starting a blog and what kind of topics you can expect if you subscribe or just follow along. My schedule won’t be regular, and I won’t inundate your email inbox. I’ll post developed, thoughtful essays on whatever I’m thinking about every once in a while.

One last thing 

Before I wrap things, I want to mention one last reason of why now and not earlier—because I finally landed on a pen name that suits me. I never really felt attached to my name. It felt too long and clunky, and it’s difficult to pronounce and even more difficult to spell. I think I read somewhere like Freakonomics that high-ranking CEOs tend to have shorter, snappier names. So, I’ve been searching and searching for the right name, and I think I finally found something short and meaningful to me. 

It comes from the realization that I like when people use the second syllable of their name as their nickname. Liz for Elizabeth. Lip for Phillip. It’s cool. It feels cool, so I did that to my last name—shortened it by taking just the second syllable. It feels right.

-Rysh