I don’t read a lot of blogs, but there are a few I like. What I notice about the popular, successful ones is that they seem to have some unified purpose, a type of life philosophy, if you will. The blogs that is. Though often a blog with a life philosophy, or let’s call it a blog philosophy, are naturally written by people who have a life philosophy (you can learn more about the idea of a life philosophy, or “philosophy of life” in William Irvine’s book “A Guide to the Good Life: the ancient art of stoic joy”).
So what’s this blog about? What’s my blog philosophy? We’ll only get into what I’m about indirectly, for now, through an investigation of what this blog is about. And you know, I don’t really know. Which might tell you something about me, too. I know that I like to write, like to teach, like to communicate. Beyond that, though, what am I doing here? I think in order to be successful, a cohesive thread running through all posts is required. Something that unifies the whole venture, no matter how loosely. Something that really ties the room together.
I have a tendency to simplicity, frugality (with an occasional splurge reflex), essentialism, and philosophical living. “Philosophical living”? What’s that? Not sure, it just sort of came out there on the page. I think it means I don’t sit around philosophizing, having all these ideas, then going about my typical consumer, career success, modern western society-driven way through life. Philosophical thinking really plays a major role in my day-to-day decisions and actions.
In some ways this is good. Fewer knee-jerk reactions for me. But it can lead to paralysis or at least unnecessary inner conflict. Lots of seeing both sides (or however many sides I can dream up) of all issues, making a course of action more difficult than it needs to be. But it’s not an unexamined life, and I mostly avoid it being a thoughtless, random life.
Back to the point. What’s this blog about? My blog philosophy, or philosophy of blog. Not sure. No one is reading it right now anyway, so for now I’m going to keep myself posting, in order to keep myself writing, and I bet a theme will start to emerge all on its own.
We’ll see.