It has been far too long since I had the first impulse of doing my own thing, and carving my own path. For some reason I picture it as a descend into myself. It’s dark… I need solitude to achieve this. For many years I’ve loved sharing and discovering knowledge with others but right now, I want to advance by myself… Make no mistake, I love sharing… But it seems like I’m losing time on stuff that does not align enough with my own interests. It may sound selfish, but I need to be selfish right now.

[you-research-what-strikes-you-deeply]

Se investiga lo que te atraviesa

RMB

unless it’s something personal it’s very hard to keep yourself motivated

Irina Rish

I know it… I’m missing some fire I had before, it is depleting. And yet, something inside of me is screaming:

I want to go beyond

For what its worth, doing things for and with other people is motivating -see [vasopressin-bonding-effect]; you can really feel the dopamine hits with each smile… But I’m tired… And I want to go beyond. It’s been a long time since I have tried to do my own thing seriously, I mean, sure I can do little projects, but nothing that really shakes the core… Maybe because I’m scared of failing… I read about all of these topics, I get excited to the point of having an adrenaline rush… But… I dont know where to begin… There is simply too much, and I want to do it well, with the will of someone who wants to be truly deep, to have something valuable to say and add to this endeavor.

[understanding-and-innovation]

El que no entiende no innova

Castro, un profesor de física de la USB

And so, I want to understand, beyond and as deep as I can… It seems like time is not enough ever, there is always some project to do. How to be deep in such circumstances? Without the smile of the other as motivation? There must be a way -the wayward way-, to go the left-hand path. Why write so emotionally about such an intellectual pursuit… Because I need it to have meaning, for someone so mythologically minded, what I do must fit my arc, and I cannot do science without passion as much as I cannot give a lecture without doing heavy gestures and dancing. If anything, my tenacity comes from them.

[the-power-of-emotional-investment]

La razón es fría, pero ve claro; darle calor y no ofuscar su claridad; las pasiones son ciegas, pero dan fuerza; darles dirección y aprovecharse de su fuerza.

Jaime Balmes

In restropective, it seems I hid myself on doing things with others as a way to run from the things I truly want to do. When I do things where I’m not so invested, where failure is tolerable, my mind can run more free and careless. But for things at the core, I’m afraid, almost like an intellectual version of paralysis by analysis. A procrastination of what truly matters to you… Surely, the consequences of this are devastating for your arc.

[fear-of-failure] , [paralysis-by-analysis]

So, I have decided to start 2023 with an honest effort to ammend this. Somehow, the vicinity of the 30s, is telling me that time is running out, that im no longer full of potential but that I finally MUST BE. I sense the call, and broken-hearted, with the blessing in the breaking, I’m trying to answer it.

[kids-are-pure-potential] [the-blessing-is-in-the-breaking]

All I have is my honor, a tolerance for pain. A couple of college credits and my top-notch brain

Lin Manuel Miranda @ Hamilton. I alledgedly have a top-notch brain, but I dont reckon that. I at least have curiosity, my rapt attention, my rarified approach, the Life authentic. [hamilton] [rapt-attention] [life-authentic]

How to start? I want to truly know this, how to do that… And so, I start procrastinating with stuff regarding “learning how to learn”…, “how to take notes”. How do you do that? When you dont care is easy… When you do, whats the way to do it properly?

[notetaking]

I vaguely remember doing Barbara Oakley’s course of “learning how to learn”, the insights of the focused and diffused modes of the brain, the importance of actually engaging problem-solvingly with the material; the idea of chunking, kolb’s learning cycle. Scott Young’s visceralization concept. The insight machine of Colin Galen (which is somewhat what Rosty Bruce -an old pal of mine-referred to as being a system that takes topics and outputs shit about them). Karen L. McKee’s writing is thinking [scientific-writing-with-karen-mckee]. I hope these ideas lead me to the optimal way of learning deeply. I have the dream of creating here my knowledge-graph. Maybe that would be useless, sort of like the failure of the semantic web… On one hand, creating a corpus for the whole web is just too big, but maybe for learning-purposes, digesting ideas the old fashioned way, by connecting them and writing them and so on… maybe that would help me to gain insight.

[how-to-learn] [focused-and-diffused] [visceralization] [knowledge-graph]

Side note: I think I may have a thing for summarizing ideas into aforisms, that is, short phrases that are easy to recall (alas the map is no the territory). While writing this my mind just jumps where it desires, people have told me that it seems that my thought is chaotic, entangled, and that I easily lose track when I talk. I always thought of myself as quite organized and structured, almost devoid of chaos…

[phrase-compression] [flight-of-ideas-racing-thoughts]

In any case, I will try to maintatin a periodic diary of concepts, ideas, (“an intellectual diary”,the logbook of the trip–> cuaderno de viaje, bitacora, what beautiful names for this wayward trip I I will be taking). This reminds me of RMB, she told us about the importance of writing during a trip, that writings done during the trip, and afterwards are different. She cited some books, I gotta ask her about them. [writting-during-vs-after-journey]

That makes me thing of her story about how her mentor taught her… Damn… I have to ask her about lots of things. Somehow during my first trip to Canada I could not be bothered to write about my day, but maybe this way, by writing about the ideas I encounter, it will be easier for me. I do have words for ideas…and as always, yet another thought branches… [flight-of-ideas-racing-thoughts]

EDIT: One of the things that I fear most is becoming a librarian/knowledge collector because I would suffer of a lack of imagination. Hopefully this wont be true. I do remember thinking that this effort might be worthless, that is, building a knowledge graph. I would be better of trusting that at the right time my brain will remember the important thing.