Jottings

A couple of my friends have stated that they find many of the Fear, Fun and Filoz posts uplifting.  That is satisfying because "uplifting" is just what I am aiming to be.  I started this blog with the idea of fixing an oversight and omission I made while teaching: I never really came down clearly and firmly on the value and method of meditating daily.  I return to that subject every now and then but I doubt if many people try it based on posts here alone.  

Over time, it became clear that there were many other excellent topics and ideas floating around and I didn't want to confine myself. So, I adopted the slogan "What comes to mind", which seemed obviously true but hinted that mind things as opposed to, for instance, sports or popular music would more often be the focus.  Since lots of my ideas relate to what I read in books, blogs, magazines and what I see in movies and on tv, I do mention those types of sources quite often.

It is possible to supply a categorical label or several for each post but I haven't done that.  I have provided a window on every page that searches the blog for terms and does a pretty good job of it.  I don't make a big distinction between a good movie, play, book, article, poem or anything else of significance.  I realize that one day, a subject relates to this topic in my head but a year later, it may relate to something different for me. The book "Everything Is Miscellaneous" is an excellent one for grasping the difference between ways of organizing material, objects or statements in a logical, hierarchical way and the possibility today of using a broader, less rigid system.

I learned today about the value to thinkers and historians of Darwin's notebooks and the custom in his day and earlier of keeping "commonplace books", notebooks of thoughts and experiences that occurred in one's life.  A diary, like this blog, can contain entries in chronological sequence but without the search window, it would be difficult to find all entries relating to a single subject.  It didn't take long, even as far back as 1985, to learn the value of writing a computer file, as opposed to using a pen or pencil.  But it is difficult to create a computer file on the run.  Smart phones could certainly help but I don't want the expense, the small screen and keyboard and the large object that won't fit in my little pockets.  

I am very skeptical of the long-range value of my writings, or anyone's for that matter.  Still, I have some ideas I may try to keep more of my notions in a form I can look them over.  I do have a file of 135 notes I refer to for blog post ideas but I may try to broaden outside that file and make use of other means.  Right now, I try to keep pen and paper handy wherever I am and I do make some use of handwritten notes.  But I may try Twitter or Google Voice or other tools and schemes to produce more notes and ways of thinking of them and see where they might lead me.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety