Writing as a Natural Extension of the Mind

I write for myself, not for others.

I used to tell myself that everything I needed to think, could be done quite nicely in the scratchpad inside my head – this is no longer true to me. There are only so many things the human brain can focus on at once.

I used to claim hat my thoughts were clear and well described -that I at any given time knew what I was thinking. This is no longer true to me. Even as my fingers type this sentence, I find myself crystallizing my mind patterns in new ways. The very act of writing creates new thoughts and reorders old ones.

This brings me to one of the most useful skills I have ever learned: 10 finger typing. I used to hate 10 finger typing – thinking it too hard a learning curve for me. Today, I feel happy that I took the time and effort to learn it. The gap between my internal thinking and the words that come out is narrowing. Having mastered 10 finger typing allows me to write different content, not just type the same content at higher speed.

Writing also forces me to make my thoughts accountable. The brain is a very complex machine with many agents screaming for attention. The very fact that we come out anywhere NEAR consistent is an amazing fact. By writing, I am forcing a further alignment of my mental processes – it is method for focusing.

By writing, I make my thoughts eternal – assuming the Internet is around for eternity (unlikely I guess). Anyone in the future can potentially (and quite pretentiously) pick up my focused thoughts of this moment. That puts a certain responsibility on me – another good reason for writing.