If I Could Make This My First Post

This post used to be in my “About Me” page but thought it was more suited as a regular post.

This blog is an experiment for me.  I have recently discovered the blogging world from not really having any idea about what I want to do after college, mostly career-wise.  By reading tons of Gen Y blogs and getting the feeling that I am not the only one confused is a great relief.  Thus I want to join in on the party. I am looking at this blog as more of a journal than a “blog” (sort of insurance if no one reads any of this). Like a journal I will comment on whatever compels me to write at the time.  Maybe blogging will be the new form of journaling, just far more public.

Since I’m entertained by things from economics to cooking and books to fitness, this blog will touch on what I find perplexing, interesting and exciting.  I think of myself as a learner most of all.  My curiousity for pretty much everything keeps me pretty busy, I don’t get bored anymore.  I hope to learn as much from you as you can expect to learn from me. I also look at this blog as a way to improve my writing. I’m hoping blogging will make it easier for me to convey what I feel to paper and to people.  I’m sure this blog will evolve a ton and this post will be meaningless very shortly.

How To Think For Yourself

I tend to ask my girlfriend what she thinks before moving forward with a task or action.  Overtime I have relied on her more and more for advice on smaller and smaller things.  This is wrong for several reasons and is something that happens a lot online.  How do I know?  I know because of the prevalence of “how-to” blog posts.  I as much or as more than other people love to learn, which is the point of a how-to post, but there’s a point where self-reliance gives way to reliance on others to tell us how to think and how to do what.

The advice on several blogs I read religiously have “how to” posts.  How to do this, how to do that.  It is not hard to find posts that tell you how to do something better.  I enjoy them immensely and have learned a lot.  But all this “how to” advice seems to be contradicting maybe the most common advice online: take action, do something, now.  If you are reading “how to” posts constantly, you are not taking action.  The time used reading how to write “amazing content” for instance, is lost when one could have just started writing and developing their own methods that work for them.  There’s value in learning “how to” do something, but there is even more to gain from figuring it out yourself and learning from your failures and victories (another common piece of advice out there: try a lot of stuff and don’t be afraid to fail).

The fault isn’t necessarily in the blogger who writes the “how-to” post (unless all their posts are “how-to,” or the information is so vague and obvious).  Most bloggers have a wealth of knowledge and are doing a service to their readers for providing free information that would be much harder to obtain a decade or two ago.  The fault is in the reader that over-saturates themselves with “how-to” content.  It is up to the reader to gauge how much learning is too much.  And it’s the reader’s job to take action in their own lives. But  it’s the readers job to be critical of the blogger.  Ask hard questions, don’t believe the blogger if you know better.  Innovation in life stops when everyone agrees and follows the same process. Think for yourself and you might be surprised how much you can do by yourself.