Eureka Moments — mnchrm vol. xxxvii
Hello friends! Happy Monday. Hope you've gotten off to a good start in this new week.
Yesterday was Mother's Day here in the US. On my daily blog, I wrote a bit about the difficulty I faced in filling out the card I bought for my Mom. How can I put into words the influence my Mom has had on my life? Of course, I can't; but I still felt like I should try.
So far the daily blog has been a success and a failure. I'm having fun writing it; picking topics to cover, drafting 300 words without a care, trying to make something feel small and intimate... It's as fun as I thought it would be. On the other hand, no one is reading it.
It's a topic I come back to time and time again, writing for the internet. I love writing certain pieces, and love to find my thoughts in the process and share it in the world. But without much of a name or a following (aside from you lovely people!), a lot of these pieces I write get lost in the ether. So it goes back to intention with writing. Am I writing to be read, or for the process of writing?
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The answer is both, though of course I'd love as many readers as possible. The daily blog is meant to be a small, personal project, so I'm going to continue writing it, readers or not. It's achieving the goal I had for it, which is sort of an extension of the daily journals I write, though more thought out on a specific topic.
What do you think? Change nothing? Focus more on sharing / marketing? Or are blogs just not interesting to people? Either way, I'm going to keep it up.
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In my preferred echo chamber of Twitter, Game of Thrones continues to be the center of conversation, at least on Sunday nights. But only for one more week, I suppose. Don't worry, intrepid readers, I haven't been watching so no spoilers, but I would like to talk about it.
I read the books, and generally enjoyed the experience. I knew a guy freshman year in college who was super into the lore, which is a testament to the depth of the stories. I've said for a while that if another book gets released (which seems far from guaranteed, unfortunately) I'd reread the whole series. Or at least the chapter summaries for the previous books.
I can't think of a series that has had the same response from the audience in the way this show has. It's clear it's not being received as well critically this time around, although may be as popular as ever. Yet, few seem to be happy.
A big part of this is the echo chamber of media consumption and audience reception we see now, on social media and on outlets covering the episodes. Yet, it seems clear something is off. The show is too dark, too rushed, the actors aren't happy, the show-runners aren't happy, and the audience isn't happy. It seems like a clear case of the audience knowing something is wrong, but not knowing what.
I'm so interested in it all, like a train wreck in slow motion. I think whatever has "gone wrong" is more than just the show running out of books to adapt. That situation in itself isn't exactly uncommon, with anime surpassing the source manga every once and a while. Those cases are usually narratively disastrous and leads to filler episodes.
I'd like to point out though that the books themselves were not always that good. Often times, they were boring at best, and a chore to read at worst. GRRM is an interesting writer, but I don't think he is always able to make good on the houses of cards he builds.
And now, should another book ever come out, how could it not be inflected by the audiences response to the show? Wouldn't GRRM try and avoid the flaws in narrative as perceived by the audience? I wanted to write a piece on how Game of Thrones lacked an authorial vision, split between GRRM and D&D, but by now it seems as likely to be no one's game as anyone's.
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This weekend, with my girlfriend gone, I was left to fend for myself. Back to my old loner ways. I'm very comfortable alone, setting my own pace and doing things by myself, although I yearn for connection, community, and acknowledgement as much as the next guy. All this to say it was nice to just do whatever, though I missed my girlfriend.
I ended up seeing a movie by myself, an anime film called 'Penguin Highway', based on a novel by Tomihiko Morimi. I liked it a lot, and ordered the source novel in Japanese to try and read for myself.
The story is told from the perspective of a young boy, I think about 9 years old, who views the world in a very inquisitive and experimental way. Each new scenario is an opportunity for him to learn, some new test to conduct, and copious notes to take.
He's relentless about documenting the world around him, exploring different ideas, and applying a method for new encounters. His Dad chimes in every once and a while with a few tips, on how to achieve 'Eureka' moments, and scientific processes to undertake.
Things take a very strange turn, with penguins beginning to show up in their small Japanese town. He learns that penguins follow the same path each time they reach the land, and sets out to solve the mystery of where they're coming from, and going.
It's a lovely little film, and the childlike wonder of the world and the inquisitive worldview of the characters are something I aspire to. It made me want to redouble my efforts in note-taking, handwriting, and exploration. It's a world where the kids play chess with each other in breaks, where both the mundane and fantastical are approached with joy.
There's a few odd points with the film but I still found it to be very genuine and wondrous. If you can make it through some childishness, the worldview alone makes it worth the watch.
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To those ends, I've got my notebook in front of me where I'm writing about my own goals, what I want to do and why, as well as prioritizing what I want to do. I haven't always been very good about sticking to my goals, and partially to blame is the difficulty in finding a metric and method by which to track them.
A lot of the sorts of things I want to do are more qualitative, where trying to assign some metric for success is a bit difficult. On the flip side, without a solid metric, it's less likely to be accomplished.
It's sort of the difficulty in schooling. Getting good grades is not the same thing as being smart, nor as learning the material well, though there is overlap in all of these. For now, I'm trying to find a very personalized approach to my goals. I'll let you all know what I come up with.
Thanks for your time this week, and I hope this letter has found you well. See you in a week, but feel free to hit reply or send me a message on Twitter!
Your faithful commander,
— I
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