post hoc ergo propter hoc

I like learning about things in a non-systematic, haphazard way. I do that with programming languages. I'll decide on a particular language and then I'll watch a series of YouTube videos or a course on Udemy or whatever, and even if I've been through that course before I generally start at or near the beginning and rather than follow each lesson through I'll try to anticipate and see if I can figure out how to do the thing. Same with learning about philosophy, which I've been doing for a few months now. I have different books and I watch videos, but I just follow my interest, I don't work systematically. 

consolation

The comfort you seek becomes your discomfort, and the discomfort you face becomes your comfort. Your refuge becomes your prison and the world outside your door becomes your liberty. 

writing is like teaching

Just because someone knows how to do something or they’re knowledgeable about a topic doesn’t mean they can teach it. There’s a lot of explanation that seems obvious to someone who already knows how to do something that is necessary when teaching others how to do it. Also, you have to work through the material gradually and systematically, not making any quick moves. Sometimes we think that those ‘quick moves’ display our expertise, but they don’t — they just confuse those we are trying to teach. A similar principle applies to writing. To really get your message across, you have to include a lot of ‘signposting’ and explanation that you, the writer, don’t need but which helps the reader to understand what you’re trying to convey. 

determinations

I think that temperature can be a good analogy for depression. Severe depression is like being permanently cold and having no way to warm up. You’re not free and flexible. Over many years, through catering to my own anxiety and depression, I had cultivated a cold world in my mind. Interest begets warmth, but the problem with depression is that you don’t feel interested in anything. But that’s also something that can be cultivated. Through following my interests, I can build refuges in my mind. 

I’ve written before about the 3 crucial conversations I had in 2022. The one I had with the nurse in detox was about how, through catering to my anxiety, through withdrawal and rumination, I had built my anxiety into something all-consuming, like a toxic plant or a monument to terror that requires all my attention. She said, imagine what you could do if you engage in life. You could cultivate a health-giving plant or a monument that celebrates character, spirit, joy, beauty. It’s not just about being physically active — like doing exercise — or being socially active — doing stuff with people — although it is about those things, but there’s a kind of mental activity that is the opposite of rumination and withdrawal. 

NF’s song Mansion is about the dwelling we build for ourselves when we take refuge in fear and doubt. That’s a mystery that really interests me — how, with depression especially, what we fear and loathe becomes a refuge that we seek. We take refuge in the thing that we are taking refuge from. It’s like a recursive function. I think it’s about control. We want to tame and domesticate our fear. We serve it, thinking that we will be rewarded by its subservience when what we actually get is our subservience. 

When I think in general about all the mental vicissitudes I’ve been through in my life, it’s with a sense of regret, even bitterness. If I wasn’t so messed up mentally, I would have been more successful, more normal, happier, nicer to people. I would have been able to make a meaningful, positive contribution to the world. But for some reason, when I think about the actual experience of those struggles — like, thinking about particular battles rather than the whole war — I feel a sense of appreciation that I went through those things. I see some value that I didn’t see at the time. 

reading the waves

Books like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves require a different kind of reading. You have to resist the urge to continually interpret what you’re reading and just let the text talk to you — take it in and see what forms in your mind. 

words @

Places I write:

• This blog - What I write here is very free, informal, experimental. 
• Medium - These are more like proper essays or articles, that I write for an audience. 
• Substack - Here I write about English, literature and literary theory.
• Patreon - This is something new, where I'm going to try to write fiction.

200

Sometimes I feel like what I write has to be profound to matter, but then I was thinking about the value of writing about everyday life and concerns. In 200 years’ time, people are going to be interested in what life was like in 2026, and what seems ordinary and everyday now will then be more interesting than most other kinds of writing. The example of Anne Frank comes to mind. She just wanted to write her own thoughts and reflections relative to the difficult experience she was going through. When she did that, she surely wouldn’t have thought that anyone else would read what she wrote. At most she may have shared some of what she wrote with people she was close to. But look what happened. Her work is timeless, immortal, treasured by millions.