6 Years Later

Wow. This was fun.

I was just watching a clip from Last Week Tonight about the fashion industry and the ubiquitous problem of child labor in sweatshops. From the inner recesses of my mind, a faded memory rose up of a naive 19 year old college freshman, and his attempt at deep thinking.. and blogging. Luckily I remembered the name of the blog (I Find This Intriguing; wow, I feel like that says enough right there), and started perusing my old thoughts. In addition the the laughs and a couple of embarrassed head shakes, the experience was actually quite profound. There were three things that really stood out to me.

1) The post about God. Wow. Definitely some anger there. That anger is gone now. I would like to say that after years of inner turmoil, debate, research and existential searching, I finally found some peace; some sort of inner comfort. Sadly- or rather, not sadly, simply neutrally- I have moved on. The opposite of love is not hate; it's indifference. I'm just moving along on auto-pilot. Six years later.

2) My writing has improved, in my humble opinion, a lot since then. This makes perfect sense. Since then I spent three years studying English Literature and Creative Writing, and generally became a more knowledgeable, dare I say, adult. That's a good thing, and that's the way it should be. But these old blog posts helped make that growth a little bit more tangible. The take-away from this, and I say this basically every day- I need to write more. Writing is like a muscle, and when you don't use it, it goes away. That same thing has happened to my physical body. Well, I just joined a gym to take help improve on my physical self, might as well take the opportunity to work out my intellectual muscles also.

3) I'm still amazed by the innate desire for self expression. I've noticed this about myself over the years. The ideas I tried to express in those posts were mediocre and half baked, at best. And maybe the ideas expressed right here and now are also average. That's not the point. I have an idea, and I want to express it! Express it to whom? Good question, as no one is going to read this. But the drive is still there. And it's the same drive that makes people want to write. We like to tell stories, to share in something. Even though my ideas might not ever be novel or significant, there is tremendous value in simply attempting to share them. As I right this, I'm thinking of how I'm going to use this moment as a springboard into blogging more, and writing more. I already have a schedule planned out, and topics I want to discuss. In reality, I know this probably won't happen. I'll write two or three more posts and then lose the passion and six years from now I'll stumble across this old post and laugh at how naive and sophomoric it is. Well, I hope that maybe this time I'll finally beat the odds. But even if I don't- that's ok. Because there is still value in trying.

If I do fail again, and the next time someone reads this is 31 year old Yitzchok, then I have two things to say. One, wow man, you're old. You're not even in your 20's anymore! Second, what's up? Fill me in on your life. I'm sure it's awesome.