Beginning a blog

I’m interested in too many things to be good - like really good - at any of them. I spend most of my time thinking about food and cooking and some combination of business/management/economics. My parents took me to art and fabric shows when I was a child, and though I remember that experience being mildly traumatic, when I grew up I developed interests in art and traditional American workwear fabrics. I listen to a wide variety of music - Spotify makes mixes for me based on hip hop, musicals, jazz, folk, relatively poppy female leads and relatively brooding female leads. I guess I haven’t been listening to as much classic rock/blues/Indian classical/african/middle eastern recently… I’m currently reading a bunch of stuff about India, and I hope to blog about it as well.

This is a great time to be interested in lots of things! Lots of experts write about the things they are interested in, and I love that we can surf the collective knowledge of millions of people generated over centuries. I realize that there are lots of experts and there are lots of perspectives that are not represented on the internet (and I hope to point to some perspectives to help out), but that shouldn’t overshadow the fact that what we have now is amazing.

And yet this present collective expertise is intimidating to a generalist like me - and it is the reason I’ve not really had a blog or web presence till now. Why read me, when there are a lot of experts? A lot of amateur writing is obviously, if not intentionally, misinformed, and I don’t want to add to that corpus either.

So what is an amateurist, a generalist to do? I plan to write mostly at the intersection of various areas where the coverage appears to be somewhat light. I plan to point to things that I read and learn that seem to me to be particularly interesting.

And then there is just - thinking out loud. I may not be an expert, but I have thoughts that I think are interesting or fun, and I plan to share them. I take my inspiration from Dorothy Parker…

Neither Bloody nor Bowed

They say of me, and so they should,
It’s doubtful if I come to good.
I see acquaintances and friends
Accumulating dividends,
And making enviable names
In science, art, and parlor games.
But I, despite expert advice,
Keep doing things I think are nice,
And though to good I never come-
Inseparable my nose and thumb!

- Dorothy Parker