It has been a gradual and creeping process but I believe that I have become too used to reading, but not writing content.

Yesterday a high school mate told us, laughingly, that he had spent some time writing 300 words on the topic of nose hair. It started off as a plan to review the year past. Somehow, along the way, he lost the plot and started contemplating the more pressing issue of the overgrowth of his nose hair and the point of growing hair out of one’s nose. Then he spent more time tightening his prose and choosing precise words to convey the dismay that he felt when he extracted a half-white one. To be exact, it was black on one end, brown in the middle, and white on the other end.

I don’t believe anyone has read his piece yet. But it appears that his nose hair has inspired another running train of thought that is happily, pointlessly chugging along.

Is High School Mate’s nose hair trying to reach out to the sun? Is that why it has been growing as quickly as it can, even as it is relentlessly plucked, so that it can see the light of the day? Would we finally achieve world peace when the arms race of efficient growing versus efficient plucking stops?

Anyway, I digress. The point is, there is no point. What is the point of art? What is the point of play? What is the point of living? Here I perform some word juggling. What is the point of art, if there is no play? What is the point of play, if there is no living? What is the point of living, if there is no art?

Anyway. Again.

I want to write more in the new year. Some plans are under way, a new domain name, a new website structure, some content ideas. A consolidation of my online identity and content production onto one platform.

As practice, I have been writing about things that have excited me these days, including my progress in solving the Rubik’s Cube without a manual (I am about 5/6 through), the first time that I had properly cooked in months, and certain ideas on the governance of artificial intelligence, which I had been reading about. None of the writings have made it to being published, and my graveyard of dead drafts is now populated with half-baked remains again.

But that’s ok. I wrote. I can’t expect to produce shiny articles or contain my control freak perfectionism within a few weeks, after lacking practice and being in creative prison for so many months. If I continue writing ten drafts, out of which one will be posted, or if I continue fine-tuning my inner critic to stop yelling and giving false alarms (This is a drill that people will hate what I write and judge me until the end of time! I repeat, THIS IS A DRILL! ), maybe this year will be a year of writing and thinking through writing.

The important thing is to start. I believe I have, and I believe I have finally written a post that I can press publish on. Thanks, High School Mate’s nose hair. Never stop growing.