So, I’ve been wanting1 to get myself writing again, and just couldn’t come up with an excuse that would jumpstart the process. It just happens that I’ve had a couple of Blogger sites hanging around, unused: this one and Jon McSkeptic's Science Fiction/ Fantasy Emporium. I had started writing a story I had planned to update once a week (or so), as well as write about science fiction/fantasy in general. I only got as far as two story updates and one silly post about one of the other posts. I know, totally lame, and totally predictable. I don’t remember what interrupted this massive deluge of creativity, but I do know that very quickly inertia set in. I’ve always wanted to write, and I’m not too shabby at words. Yet I’ve allowed myself to cave in to self-doubt, resulting in a self-limiting barrier I have rarely overcome.
What has brought me to a point I could finally get past this
obstacle is a series of events that I find fascinating. You see, I’m addicted
to the Internet. And because of this affliction, I subscribe to many blog feeds
(through the soon to be eliminated Google Reader). One of the many websites in
my feed is the (surprisingly skeptic-themed) Skepchick. They have a regular
daily set of links they call “Quickies” leading to pages ranging from the cool
to the kooky.
Today’s post2 led me to this boingboing offering from Cory Doctorow.
He lambasts Texas congressman Louie Gohmert for his hilarious misunderstanding
of how Google’s Gmail ads work, as shown by this youtube video. Granted, how
the ads really work and what is done by the algorithms used does deserve some
investigating, this is not what led me to want to make a blog post. At the end
of the video, and on the sidebar on the youtube page, was a link to this video.
It’s unimaginably insane, and I made an appropriately amazingly insightful and
snarky comment. No, this was not the catalyst for wanting to write, oh no. I
saw links to repostings of this video in the sidebar, and for reasons I can’t
explain I wanted to try to find the originator, thus clicking over to this
exact same clip.
All too quickly losing steam for this line of inquiry (I
think I was afraid of becoming more stupider if I kept watching it), I noticed
this interesting video. Now, this story wouldn’t be worth telling if this
turned out to be why I got to writing, now would it? Of course not.3 The thumbnail to this video was just too
intriguing to my ADHD brain, so I watched it. My ranty-sense was finally
starting to tingle and I actually felt like commenting in earnest (not in jest
and all ad-hominem-y), but was inevitably distracted by the user’s notification
that he had an update. Unable and unwilling to restrain myself I watched. This, my good people, is where the seed was sown. I started Googling and
Wikipedia-ing left and right because I just had to comment, but I started to
realize that because comments are limited to 500 characters, I would have to
write many separate comments focusing on separate points.
Posting so many comments (each likely to fill youtube’s
character limit) would probably get me labeled as a spammer. I’ve had my
channel for a long time and don’t want to risk having it sanctioned in some
way, so I became reticent about commenting. I did decide to reply to another
commenter regarding geosynchronous orbits and discovered that the OP4
has enabled moderation, meaning that it’s also likely that all that effort
would never be seen by anyone else. This is tipping point. My ADHD brain
started to formulate the outline of what I would have written. Unwilling to simply
let it go, my brain also cycled through alternatives. I don’t have the patience
to edit videos, and since I would have to write something, regardless, I decided to
resuscitate this blog.
You are obviously not now reading about why there aren’t, or
weren’t gigantic alien ships visiting us and our sun (ooh, what a giveaway).
What happened, then?5 Well, dearfolk, I thought it would be jarring
and tactless to jump right into something so information heavy, and possibly
quite dry without a proper introduction. So, my ADHD brain started thinking
about introducing myself in some fashion. My brain also noticed all the tabs
open in my browser. I came to the conclusion that the crazed
stream-of-consciousness path I took to this video and the need to write about
it would make for a suitable MacGuffin to let you get to know me.
- Why does MS Word hate present perfect progressive?
- That is, Friday, 22 March, 2013
- I freaking love answering my own rhetorical questions. It’s so . . . satisfying.
- Original Poster. I know you know what that means, I simply love footnotes.
- I am so going to answer my own rhetorical question
