I am one of those people who likes to put a lot of thought into what I write. Even simple things like emails often take me much longer to write than they probably should as I am constantly re-reading and re-writing line after line, paragraph after paragraph. Trying to express my thoughts and opinions in an eloquent way, constantly worrying about how something might be received, striving to make the reading of it a pleasant experience for my intended audience. The words seem to constantly dance around the page; each adverb, adjective, verb, noun, and punctuation mark changing the tone and connotation with every variation.
This process of constantly seeking the perfect way to express what I am thinking and feeling is mentally taxing, yet addicting. Twitter, with its character limits, provides a unique challenge that is almost like Sudoku for words. However, this inability for me to just spew my thoughts into a text box has made Twitter something I rarely do.
In fact, it is for that reason that I find blogging particularly difficult. I have numerous posts that have been started, but never finished. Posts that I feel require far more time than I am able to give to turn them into something I would feel proud of. In order to be a successful blogger these days it seems like the rule is Quantity over Quality. Sites like Huffington Post spamming Facebook timelines with silly lists and articles, news sites that use ostentatious titles just for clicks, all seem to have a business model of employing as many prepubescent teens as possible to churn out post after post after post, without thought of grammar or spelling.
The fact that I have now spent over 2 hours on this blog post is a primary example of how I am not suited for the blogging world. With this post I would like to relinquish my obsessive compulsive desire to make every word perfect. I will endeavor to just let my fingers type as fast as I can think of words to put on the page. The backspace key will become obsolete, and editing will be a thing of the past. Hopefully this results in this blog being updated more frequently– I have a couple of tutorials in progress on Evolutionary AI and Neural Networks that I want to write.
So consider this post my formal apology to the English language, and the beauty that can be found in the pages of thoughtful prose and within the lines of a novel.
Forgive me if my future posts are not as thoughtful, and contian soem typeos.
Travis Payton
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