Bleh, I really don’t feel like writing, but I didn’t write yesterday, and the commitment for Halfhaven is a post every other day. This one’s gonna be 500 words of low-effort stream of consciousness, just to clear that bar.

I’m not obligated to write, of course. I don’t really believe in the concept of obligation. I hope to do a high-effort post on this at some point. For now, I recommend Nate Soares’s writing on the matter, which heavily influenced my own view. No, I don’t have to write, so why am I doing so even though I don’t feel like it? Well, I want to follow through on Halfhaven. I’m looking forward to the feeling of pride about my 30 blog posts at the end of two months. I’m against self-coercion, but sometimes hard or unpleasant things are good to do. The trick is to remind oneself of why one is doing it. For a while, I just didn’t do hard things, and it turned out that only doing easy things wasn’t a recipe for happy thriving. Ever closer to my dao!

Isn’t this sort of low effort post just to technically follow through on Halfhaven against the spirit? Eh, I don’t think so. Lower the bar. Better to write something to honor my commitment rather than think about putting in a bunch of effort I’m not feeling up for, then write nothing and fail out of Halfhaven after two posts. This keeps me in the habit of writing at all; writing well can come later. As the parable of the pottery class teaches, quantity leads to quality.

Ok, that’s 269 words. Over halfway done! Now what else can I say here? How about some ideas I have for future posts:

  • What is a “hivemind”, really? Why despite sci-fi presenting it as scary, becoming part of a large mind is great actually
  • Some of my strategy heuristics for Magic and maybe other games as well
  • An ad for my new personal chef business
  • A write-up of the web app I made for generating song lyrics from prose
  • Thoughts on externalizing cognition, both practical and philosophical
  • All structures are temporary, all moments are eternal

A few I probably won’t do for Halfhaven, because they’re important to me and I want to put a lot more writing effort in than I typically have available in a two-day span:

  • My mindset of “no rules, only consequences”
  • A retrospective on being addicted to weed for a while
  • My feelings on having children

If any of these seem particularly interesting to you, or there’s something else you’d like to read from me, let me know! You as a reader have influence over the content of this blog, should you choose to exercise it.

459 words. Man, this takes me back to grade school. I always hated those 500-word (or however long) essay assignments in English or History class. It feels a lot better now that I’m doing it by my own free choice though, and there’s no pressure of being graded on the result. Also, it’s an interesting marker of how much my writing skill has developed over the course of life. 500 word essays used to feel like big hard tasks. In contrast now, even though I may grumble that I don’t feel like writing, it’s really pretty easy. I started writing this less than an hour ago, and I’m basically finished. I guess there’s also a factor that an hour is less of a big deal in my current circumstances than it was when I had a full school day followed by homework load from various classes. Well, anyway, cheers to growth, to things getting easier so we can do more!

Alrighty, it’s done! Honestly, I’m surprised you read this far. Minimal edits, then I hit publish and get on with my night.