Reasons for writing a blog

“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.”

Daniel Gilbert

While blogging is different from keeping a diary in that blogging is inherently a public activity, while a diary is usually private, both activities are great tools not only for developing the writing skills and the expertise in the subject of the blog/journal, but also for providing a set of autobiographical benchmarks to the author.

Daniel Gilbert, who wrote a classic book “Stumbling on Happiness” explains in his short TED talk that people tend to underestimate the amount of change their personalities will undergo within the next ten years from the current point in their lives. Thus, it is useful to examine the actual amount of change that that one’s personality (tastes in music, favourite people and places, etc.) experienced in the past ten years. As Gilbert puts it, “it has to do with the ease of remembering versus difficulty of imagining.” A journal or a blog provides a record, a reference point for this retrospective self-examination.

For me, this blog is a way of organizing my notes and thoughts on commonalities between photography (as an art, a business and a research tool), martial arts (as a way of personal development, bushido) and academic life (that of a researcher and a teacher). It is commonly said among photographers that “your first 10,000 photos are your worst” as a reference to the large amount of practice needed to achieve proficiency and to develop personal style. Actually, I think that it is much more than 10,000 photos. Your mileage may vary, of course. After all, talent is a strange thing with a non-uniform distribution among people. Somewhat unexpectedly though, among my first 10,000 photos are some re-discovered personal favourites that I stumbled upon while writing the blog.