It took me several weeks to get so far to type out this silly, short little post. I kept on postponing and delaying and putting off, despite having it on my day planner every day. Why is that?
This is my first blog post on my new blog, basically a 'hi there, this is what this blog is about.' It appears I suffer from overthinking big-time. Such a first post appears to be very important to one's state of mind. In it, one defines for yourself what your blog will be about. It is equal to announce one's plan ahead. And I think that is what makes the first post so difficult.
Today, I decided, screw postponing any further. I'll just be writing whatever I want in here, straight from the heart, and if people don't like it, tough luck.
I regard myself as a forever student. Curious about everything under the sun, always chasing down interesting ideas and topics I'm coming across. Wikipedia is a pure rabbit hole for me, I don't get off there within five hours, and then I have fifty more tabs open as I followed links to their resources, and then down the latter's resources too. As such, I'm a pretty good researcher, even if I have to say so myself.
The most important symbol on a keyboard and in life is, after all, the question mark.
But a year or three ago, I read that a person forgets 75% of what they had learned just 24 hours ago. That means one had spent 4 hours studying something, just to lose 3 hours of that work a day later.
The Richard Feynman technique to the rescue. Most people only read something they're supposed to learn, maybe do some highlights in a book, making a few notes, and that's it. But Feynman's technique dictates that one has to switch from passive learning, to active recalling, to actually teaching what you've learned to an imaginary class, all right after learning something.
I tested it, and while looking a bit crazy while performing in front of a mirror pretending to be a lecturer, I found that it really helps to cement what one has learned. And what one doesn't know yet about a subject.
So that's this blog. I'm going to chase down whatever I come across and find interesting - while steering towards a bigger, grander goal - then turn my notes into an article or ten, as if I'm teaching someone somewhere on the internet about the topic.
Meanwhile, I'm hoping to pick up some freelance writing gigs from webmasters and on freelancing sites to pay my bills. And a clever idea from me - since I have 19 subjects identified I will be studying over the next 3 years - I am going to target websites dealing with those subjects. While I get to write for them, I'll also be learning more about the subject!
Am I worried that websites will instead have AI language models like ChatGPT write articles for them and rob us writers from an income? Yes, and no. Google can now detect when an article was written by a bot, and Google regards it as spam. Sites doing it will have their SEO penalized. I did my research, and will type out a post about that in a few days when I get the time.
And that's it for now, folks. You all will be writing an exam tomorrow about the topic of this article, okay. LOL. Can you recall what you just read?
Please contact me via my contact form on my blog with questions, advice, or some real human writing you need done.
