15 December 2005

An open letter

I feel a somewhat guilty/worrisome about starting a blog. There are plenty of informed (and uninformed) opinions already out there, who needs another? What can I possibly write that others have not expressed more eloquently? Am I contributing to the inevitable rise of such quaint, if modernized, saying like “you know… if you google two philosophers, you’ll get three blogs”? Should I stop before I start?

No. I’m gonna do it anyway. I’m not writing this blog as an advertising vehicle for whatever I believe might be true/false/interesting/curious about early modern philosophy, but as a bit of behavioral therapy. You see, writing is painful to me. I’ve never really digested the concept of “a draft”, and so I worry incessantly about individual words and formatting options, I imagine too many possible readers and their angry/dismissive reaction. I insist that I know my song well before I start singing. Surely, unless you are a genius wordsmith, this is a recipe for disaster (disaster = blank page).

So by way of therapy, I’m gonna write a blog and force myself to express half-baked ideas in a reasonable amount of time. Perhaps if I do this often enough, writing will become easier for me. That, if you were wondering, is the plan.

Oh, and thanks for reading, dear therapists.