You’d think that as you got older, you’d know more, but I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I feel like I actually know less. If you think about it again, it’s not that crazy a notion; the more you learn, the more you realise there is to learn. Your simplistic preconceptions become tangled in complicated nuance. It would be naive to think you could possibly know everything about anything. But rather than let this be a disheartening challenge to overcome, let this gift be an opportunity to embrace.
Another way to build a habit
I missed a day of Blogmas for the first time. I even prepped one post before flying off for the holidays to give myself a little leeway, but when I arrived home, I was simply too tired, and then I spent the whole next day at a hair salon, away from my laptop. Besides that, the internet situation in China is proving to be more difficult than I anticipated. I always seem to underestimate how slow the internet can truly be. It’s mostly that my house has especially bad connection, but the internet in China overall is still pretty slow. So even though I said that being in China wouldn’t affect the content I produce, it might and it has.
Holiday at the museum
I will forever associate museums with The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt: “Yet the museum always felt like a holiday; and once we were inside with the glad roar of tourists all around us, I felt strangely insulated from whatever else the day might hold in store.” Within these walls, everything is still. You can hear your own shoes clacking against the floor. You drift between rooms and each one has something new. Yet you don’t feel crowded. You feel like you can breathe in this large open space. You walk at your own pace. There’s no such thing as too slow or too fast.
Highlights of 2017
I recently read an article in Mind This Magazine by Ilya Yefremov that referenced Nobel-laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s TED Talk, in which he talked about how the mind is divided into the “experiencing self” and the “remembering self,” where the experiencing self “perceives the world in the immediacy of the moment” and the remembering self “reflects on the moments that have passed and constructs a narrative which serves as the basis for our memories.” Yefremov adopts this framework and asks, “Is it not almost better to focus on the more lasting world – the world of the remembering self – a world which we can affect?”
I found her advocation for the remembering self striking, because the common argument in the modern day seems to be for the experiencing self. We always hear “be more present.” And for good reason. We spend a lot of time behind our screens, and even when we’re out experiencing things, we feel this urge to document everything, whether for social media or otherwise, so we pull out a screen and snap some shots.
But perhaps the experiencing self and the remembering self don’t need to be at odds with each other. Yes, be present. But that doesn’t mean we need to devalue the remembering self in order to do so. In fact, the remembering self is what this virtual space is all about. It’s why I started blogging. And so, even though it’s March, I am writing this for my remembering self. When I look back on it, perhaps at the end of 2018, it won’t matter that I posted in March rather than January, but it will matter that I posted at all.
My wildest train ride yet
I have ten minutes to catch the train; it only takes two to get there. I pack up from MakeOffices, the co-working space where the blogging workshop was being held, say my thank yous and good byes, and head out.
Favourite posts of 2017
I remember that when I was drafting my favourite posts of 2016 last year, there were blog posts that came to mind immediately. But this year, I had to do a little more hunting to find my favourite posts. Although I’m generally happy with most (if not all) of the blog posts I publish, there wasn’t any one that I was especially proud of or that meant something especially deeply to me, except for one. I think I’ll need to do something about that this upcoming year.