Saturday 7 March 2009

So, what is a blog of ideas?

For those that don't me I grew up in suburban Maryland (that's in the United States, not in a biscuit for you Brits) just outside of Washington, DC. I ended up going to university in southern England and majoring in Philosophy, and now I'm living in London. I've been out of Uni for almost a year now and miss discussing ideas. Not just philosophical ideas, but ideas about anything, about current events, food, music, language, the weather. A lot of this is my fault, I was never very good about discussing things with people, I always preferred the company of my own head. Of course, my own head will only get me so far, I can never challenge myself and my ideas the way someone else can. So gives birth to this blog of ideas.

This will be my place to post my ideas, my thoughts, my rough cognizance of the world around me. If that last bit sounds, well, trite, it probably is. It was my feeble attempt to connect the rather absurd title of this blog to its actual content. Some posts may be very philosophical and almost academic, but make no mistake this is not an academic blog. I am categorically not an academic. Most of the time I won't be doing in depth research into any of the ideas I post, I won't be posting links to every little idea of someone else's that I reference. Because of this I imagine a lot of the time I'll end up misremembering an idea and using it in way completely unintended by its progenitor. I've made a conscious decision to do this. I've made a conscious decision to get out of my own head, to try to stop overanalysing everything I say and everything I post.

I guess the general force behind this blog will be one of discussion. I will be posting my half-baked ideas, and I hope to get responses. I hope to engage in conversation, I hope to have it pointed out where I am completely wrong and where I haven't really thought about an idea at all. I hope that by posting my own ideas I'll learn new things from all of you, and be able to question and develop my ideas.

As part of this whole new online me I've also started a Twitter feed, which will only ever be tangentially related to this blog, despite sharing a name with it. I guess it'll probably be used like anyone else uses Twitter, which is to say in a hundred different ways all at once. Twitter will by nature be less idea-centric than this blog, I'll post stupid stuff, and more personal stuff (as personal as 140 characters can be) but feel free to friend or follow or whatever the hell it's called me over there too, if I interest you.

Stay tuned later today for my first real post here which I think will be on the ethics of a financial crisis, but as it's not written yet that could all change.