“Stars are not important. There’s nothing interesting about stars. Street lamps are very important because they’re very so rare. As far as we know there are only a few million of them in the universe. And they were built by monkeys!” – Terry Pratchett on religion

Wow, and just realized that the complete collection of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos is available for instant play on Netflix!

Over the last couple days I thought of, and built, a site that I think serves a single simple purpose: to encourage a kind of writing that is in danger of being neglected in this age of public, edited, thoughtful writing on the internet. Here’s the very basic statistics page from it:

The site’s called 750 Words, and the premise is simple, to write 750 words a day. 750 private, unfiltered, unplanned, words full of tangents, spelling mistakes, inconsistencies, repetitions, lost trains of thought, etc.  It was highly inspired by a thing called Morning Pages from The Artist’s Way (read a PDF excerpt of the Morning Pages passage here.)

I think this kind of writing is different from the kind of writing that we’re doing more and more of on the internet.  Different not only in audience (yourself instead of someone else) but also in character.

I think public, edited, thoughtful writing is self-expressive in nature.  It condenses ideas, it summarizes thoughts, it explains complications, it offers opinions.  It takes the world and creates a lens that you can see it through.

Not so with private, unfiltered, unplanned writing.  This kind of writing is entirely different.  It’s self-investigative in nature. It opens up messy drawers of thought and lays everything out on the table, it takes a 99% completed thought and tears it apart into its inconsistencies. It is short on manners, etiquette and practicalities.  It dismisses entirely valid trains of thought for no reason, and dwells on nit-picky details that seem to be entirely solid.

We need both kinds of writing. They go well together. The private writing becomes fodder for later public writing. Just like our secret inner thoughts are fodder for our more simplified public personas.

Of course, writing used to be private by default. The entire world couldn’t read the notebook in the bottom desk drawer. But they could read that blog post that had as as little thought put into it.  But, after 10 years plus of writing online, and going through the first dozen major lessons of writing online, I feel like I’ve slowly edited out the crazy spontaneous and unruly voice of my subconscious from my writing. And, through neglect, I’ve slowly given it less and less attention, all the while hoping that it would produce the same gems of thought and creativity that it had back when it was given more fuel.

So, 750 Words. Yes, online, because that’s the only way I can write anymore, given that I’m on any of 3 or 4 different computers at a given time.  And because my hand has forgotten how to write long hand.  But, private.  Because it’s more about writing than reading, I’ve used a few tricks to make the writing process more enjoyable:

• Break open the text box. Let it take over the whole page, like a Word document sorta, but I like to think of it more like a typewriter.  The page automatically scrolls as you get near the bottom of the page.
• Let it auto-save. No need for a save button… you didn’t need one in you paper journal, why do you need one online?
• Count the words. Paper has a size, the internet page doesn’t. So, count the words, and know when you’ve gotten to 3 pages (the magic number).
• One entry per day… no need to title it, tag it, open it, close it, categorize it, preview it, post it, date it, or anything. One entry a day, no more no less.
• Motivate. We all need motivation, even for things that we want to do.  Even more so for things that we know are good for us, but that take work. So I added a bowling-inspired point system that rewards writing several days in a row, but not so much that it breaks your heart if you miss a day. 3 days in a row is a turkey.

I’ve been doing my version of 750 words in a private wiki for the last year… and at current count only wrote on 81 of the last 300 days.  Even that has been a great benefit to me though.  I hope to continue the practice for the foreseeable future, as long as it continues to benefit my days.

I thought of building this little tool (let me check my wiki) on December 11th. I was still thinking (and writing) about it on December 12th, so I bought the domain.  On December 13th I used one of my stub Rails site bundles to get the basics up and running (Facebook Connect, jQuery, Compass) on my shared server, created a few models, and looked up a few jQuery plugins I’d need.  Tested it on December 14th, launched on December 15th.  When the idea’s there, and the tools are there, things can happen fast.  But having those 1.5 days to brainstorm about it before taking action were what really made it happen and made me confident that I could build it without distracting too much from my other work.

Anyway, I’m going to use it. If anyone else finds it useful, that’s great! I’d love to hear any feedback that people have, too.

Generally speaking, if you wake up one day and aren’t sure what to do with your time, do something small that helps someone else. As a nice side benefit, you’ll probably feel better as well.

via The Art of Non-Conformity » Annual Review: 2009 Life Lessons.

I think this is true. When at a loss for something to do, think about the people in your life and try to think of something nice that you can do for one of them. And then don’t mention anything about doing it.

It’ll all backfire if you expect credit or congratulations or even attention for the favor. For favors to work as self-medication, they have to be rewards in themselves, private to yourself, and with no residual expectation of pay-back.

Is that possible?

1. An action that one person does for another
2. The action isn’t done out of obligation
3. The action is determined by the recipient
4. No reciprocal favor or action is necessarily implied

We should all ask our friends and family if there are any favors we can do for them. It’s a win-win.

The American Humanist Association has launched a holiday ad campaign called “No God?… No Problem!”

“No God?…No Problem!” proclaim the ads, featuring an image of several smiling, Santa hat-clad individuals. The ads will kick off in Washington, D.C. in time for Thanksgiving weekend, running inside 200 buses, fifty rail cars and on the side or tail of twenty buses. The campaign will continue with ads appearing on select buses in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco starting in early December.

(Read the press release)

I’ve been reading about these guys for the last week and really dig what they’re doing… as controversial and potentially offensive as it is, I think it’s a responsibility for us non-religious folk to be at least somewhat interested in making our beliefs more acceptable in the world.

Anyone else out there identify as a humanist?

I can’t concentrate lately.

I don’t know what my problem is. I get enough sleep, I wake up, I take my vitamins, I eat my breakfast, I stare into the blue light for 15 minutes, I write 750 word of morning braindump to try to clean out the neurons and get to the good stuff, I go on a walk, I have my own space free of distractions, I close down all the social networks, I make lists, I have projects that I like, both short term and long term, I exercise several times a week, I turn on calming thinking music, and yet.

I can’t concentrate. I don’t have the energy or the focus to do more than the mindless tasks of preparation and maintenance.

I try something new each day. A list of things I am grateful for, write out imaginary ideal futures that might plant hooks in me to pull me forward towards them.

I relax, I meditate, I go to yoga, I draw pictures.

What’s wrong with me?

My best guess is some kind of seasonal energy problem that my Vitamin D and blue light treatments haven’t kicked in yet. Crossing my fingers for some placebo effect as well.

Or maybe one of my last glasses of wine killed off the queen bee neuron of my creativity brain cluster.

By “social specialization” I am referring to how, in groups, certain people specialize to take on certain roles, strengths, weaknesses, etc.  How, sometimes, in a group one person might be the one that helps pay for drinks at the end of the night, or the person who’s able to give you a ride home, or the person who acts the silliest, or the person that cries the most, etc.

The same person might have different specializations in different social circles. In one group, a person might be the comforting one while in other they might be the distressed one.

I’m interested in this for a weird reason. I’m particularly interested in how some people specialize as being good or strong or stable. They are the ones that people can expect to more often than not keep it together during a problem, be fair during disputes, take care of others when they’re in distress, etc.

The side effect of social specialization is that when one person specializes in the direction of a strength, it sometimes becomes a cue that others can be less strong, more dependent, etc. And this is a disincentive for the strong person to continue playing that role, as it in some ways makes the other characters less strong. Are they being taken for granted? And then who will be strong for them when they need it? Parents, I’m guessing, might run into this conflict when trying to decide how protective they want to be of their children… does one shield them from all turmoil at the risk of sheltering them too much and leaving them unprepared for the eventual arrival of “real life”?

Does the person who always picks up the tab disincentivize the others to make more money? Does the person who is patient disincentivize the others from having better behavior? Does the person who always cleans disincentivize the others from picking up after themselves?

In a way, social specialization seems inevitable, and in many ways productive to a social group.  We would never have evolved into multicellular creatures unless some cells decided to specialize and take over functions from other cells.  Similarly, society has to specialize in order to grow and evolve.  We can’t all grow our own food and improve technology and raise children and build roads and govern the states and transport mail in equal amounts.

Of course, the rational answer is that we should balance specialization with giving others an opportunity to grow in their own ways. Balance strength with encouragement to grow. But at the core of the question is an anticipation of what society might be able to evolve into if it were to go whole hog into the idea of social specialization.  How many cells got left out of the first multi-cellular animals?  How many species didn’t provide something of value to the whole and therefore disappeared into the world of independent single cell outcasts?

This train of thought is creeping me out.