I have been posting lots of stuff since December 25, 2017. Not as much as Seth Godin, of course, but my little share. Why?
I don't know why, precisely, except...I see that I've been posting lots of tips and tricks, advice, things I've learned from years of working with computers, writing, and myself, and a few ideas or curios that seemed worth sharing.
I cannot find a unifying thread to the posts, nor does there need to be one, of course.
But I had a thought today -- maybe I'm emptying my cup. You've certainly heard some version of the old zen proverb:
Scholar Tokusan, who was full of knowledge and opinions about the dharma, came to Ryutan and asked about Zen.
At one point Ryutan re-filled his guest's teacup but did not stop pouring when the cup was full. Tea spilled out and ran over the table. "Stop! The cup is full!" said Tokusan.
"Exactly," said Master Ryutan. "You are like this cup; you are full of ideas. You come and ask for teaching, but your cup is full; I can't put anything in. Before I can teach you, you'll have to empty your cup."
As the commentary on that page explains:
By the time we reach adulthood we are so full of stuff that we don't even notice it's there. We might consider ourselves to be open-minded, but in fact, everything we learn is filtered through many assumptions and then classified to fit into the knowledge we already possess.
This blog started out years ago as an online research notebook: a place where I could learn about Wordpress, how to maintain a web site, and take notes on my progress through UNC-CH's Master's of Information Science program.
Later I found that I felt better on days I wrote than on days I didn't. That fueled some writing but my output was irregular, and this blog became more of a mostly blank canvas, with splotches of color here and there.
But on Christmas day last year, for whatever reason, the blog became a vessel into which I started pouring stuff that wanted to come out. It's a hodgepodge and that's OK, that's what is swirling in my mind right now.
Perhaps the reason I'm posting every day is to empty my mind and see what new knowledge (if any!) will fill that space. I've held on to a lot of this stuff for a long time. Time to share it and learn some new things.
