I can’t shake the feeling that writing on medium (or the internet broadly) is like believing I am crafting a meal that optimizes nutrition, but then trying to sell it in a store where most people love junk food. Short click-baiting titles, high doses of opinion, unclear ties to objective facts, and optimizing the capture of attention — which only incidentally, maybe, fosters wholesome conversation and spread of substantive ideas.

I can’t shake the feeling that writing here is like speaking into a void where, occasionally, you connect with another mind in a truly amazing way, that proves — yes — thoughtful conversation about how the world works is possible — BUT — still feeling vastly outnumbered by noise and appeal to more primal of human urges and instincts.

But I suppose, MY stuff is as much “noise” as anyone’s. It’s all relative.

And I suppose, if I am indeed as much noise as anyone, then that’s simply how it is, and making peace with it is the only option. As opposed to say, giving up, or, conforming my themes and ideas around mass appeal. Making peace is the only way. Becoming complete friends with the idea of capturing the attention of precisely zero people. And holding this expectation as a north star, because I remain faithful to a deeper task of understanding how the world works, and remain faithful to some notion of “integrity” that’s been forged for many (sure, I guess 4 counts as “many”) decades.

I wrote the following headlines as a mosaic of actual medium headlines from the homepage today, slightly modified. This is silly artwork that expresses how absurd the world looks, to me, while also recognizing I am likely just as absurd to everyone else. I guess this helps inoculate against feeling inhibited about my very undistinguished ideas, and also, trying not take any of it too seriously.

All ideas, mine or other’s, are tiny drops in the ocean whose destiny is virtually guaranteed to mean little over the course of the human record. All ideas expressed, are a perception of the world from someone else’s center, so in that sense, are equally valid, as much as we’d love to sort them into bins of valid and invalid.

In sum, let ideas go with no attachment to their consequent ripples. Mine ideas for the virtue of mining them, nothing else.

Today’s Headlines

The Strange Reason Men Look at My Left Breast 50% More Than my Right Breast

One Trick Guys Can Use to get SHREDDED Eating Only Jellybeans

Life Hack: Master this ONE Spiritual Skill To Manifest A Turkey Dinner in 10 minutes

Guys: The Top 10 Things You are Doing Wrong in a Foursome With Your Neighbor.

Why the Fifth Time in Prison Made Me a Lesbian

What I Learned After 90-Days Going To The Supermarket Nude. *NOT* what you think about Hotdogs.

Dear [arbitrary slice of the human population] — WE [some OTHER arbitrary slice of the human population] Will Not Stand For Your Identity Games

How Biden Caused My Divorce

How Canned Beans Saved My Marriage (The results will surprise you)

You Don’t Have a Money Problem. You Have a Cash Problem. (Think Rich, The Rest Will Take Care of Itself)

40 Years Later, Revisiting My Essay: Why Old People Suck And Young People Are Awesome — Second Thoughts