Aneesh Sathe

Earlier this year I joined the contraptions book club. It is my first ever book club, so I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I have. I have tried and failed over the past 10 years to properly start reading again but could never get beyond maybe 3-4 books at a stretch. Since March I think I’ve read about 3-4 books per month. Every generation worries that ‘kids these days’ don’t read. Online, the debate cycles endlessly — are we reading less, or just reading differently? I used to be in the reading differently camp. After all, social media, blogs, emails, chats etc were all text and I was not …

What is this urge that makes us want to be seen as something we aren’t. Take this blog, for example. I am in no way a writer. Barely even a proper blogger. My professional life has very little of this kind of writing. Scientific and investor communication, sure; but not this. Why do I have — and always have had — this urge to be, and be seen, as creative? Is this some kind of performative, effortless polymathism?

Godzilla minus one had no business being that good!

I’ve long used quarto and github pages to post in my studio. It works great. For many years I have also tried to publish my wiki/digital garden but it always kind of sucked. I had tried free programs like logseq and foam, and they were ok, but overloaded for my tastes. I like simple markdown files. Obsidian! Roam! I hear you, but no, I’m not going to be paying either to let me have control over data I generate.

Writing (almost) every day for the past month has been exhausting. It slowed down me reading significantly to say the least. But it proved a point to myself, that I can. I’ll be trying to write slightly longer posts maybe once or twice a week. I still don’t feel that I’m in the proper writing mode yet that I can stick to it if I take a month to write a long high-quality essay. I’m aiming for mediocre, but done.