Diversifying the voice

There are a number of interests I have. Most of these are cultural. I love engaging in philosophical questions. Exploring art, movies, filmography. Everyday I try to pick up a new knowledge piece and generally I'll share that with my wife or my friend Yudhanjaya as a discussion.

Over the last few months, I've spent a lot of time writing. Not on the blog mind you. On paper. A good portion of my moleskine is filled with writings and opinions. Some are based in fact. Others are purely thoughts and ideas. The point though is that they are varied.

One more thing I've done over the last few months is to go back to the question of who am I? Once we get past the layer of "Adnan is a software developer who has a tendency to gravitate towards grumpy when hungry", I wonder, what interests me? What fascinates me? What fills me with wonder and attaches to my subconscious with all the intensity of a remora? I turned to my writings to answer those questions. In it I found write ups on:

  • Questioning why we post updates to social media at all?
  • Which movies discussing the idea of using 100% of our brains are more accurate? The ones which depict a higher sense of purpose? Or an intensification of grabbing on to more earthly things? Lucy or Limitless, which one is closer to truth? What can history teach us?
  • Musings on liberal culture and where the lines grey between militancy and actual valid criticisms.
  • Character breakdowns of individuals like Tai Lopez, Milo Younopolis, Gary Vaynerchuck, and Dhananjaya Hettiarachchi.
  • Reviews of books and movies
  • Deep dives into origins and evolution of terrorism
  • Deep dives into gaming and how cheating has evolved to the point of it being an arms race

Suffice to say: It's a long list

And there's much more.

Which brought me back to this blog. I've been wondering what I want to write about for a while. I know I don't want to be writing pieces without substance. I might add in short pieces like a link to a post with a quote from it. But overall, I didn't want to write anything fluffy. At the same time, I don't want to just make my identity all about coding. And so I've started two other blogs.

And this blog? This is for everything else that makes me, me. My interests in culture. My geek outs on gaming, history, and science. The studies and critiques of art and people.

I'm also notorious for not holding to commitments like this. They inevitably get dropped along the way. I'm not sure how I'll work around that, but at the very least I want to remove the barrier of "mmm should I post this here?". I've been writing for myself for the past half year almost. Now it's time to start putting it out there.

Cover photo credit - Jan Kahánek

Posted on June 09 2017 by Adnan Issadeen