On the Road to Find Out

Cat Stevens, aka Yusef Islam :: On the Road to Find Out

Why do I write this blog?

I do not write it for you; I write it for me.

I write to learn. I write to find out.

Story illuminates and so too do facts if they can be found.

I want to know more and so everyday I ask a few questions, and then I seek out the answers.

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One thing leads to another.

I figure so long as I keep an open mind, facts will lead to patterns, and patterns will lead to an interesting story and a better understanding of the world.

Is there a frame that encompasses and explains every part of a fact-filled story? What is that frame? Can I hone it down to a few paragraphs?

Can I be disciplined in my thoughts and with my time?

If the facts and stories are of no interest to you, I am OK with that. Not everything is always interesting to everyone.

I write for me, not for you. You are just along for the ride. In this little corner of the Land of Blog, I am the only paying passenger.

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Why write, and not just read?

Because to write something you have to research something, and then you have to organize it, and you have to create a new synthesis.

At the very least you have to find a way to smooth out the words and shorten the tale so it flows into a cogent whole.

You have to make it yours.

Even if the final product is not worth the price paid, at least the process of craft and discipline has its own rewards.

You do not practice for an audience; you practice because it is a discipline.

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If you are serious, you investigate the back story.

If you are writing about now, you take the time to investigate what happened then.

You do not presume that a problem, an industry, a landscape, a people, a place, a law, or a character sprung up whole-cloth on a single day.

If you do it right you come to understand why things are the way they are, and even if they are evil, you know they are rational, and well within the arc of the explainable.

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You started the day with a question.

If it was a real question, and you sought a real answer, the process of self-education has inevitably moved you from where you started in the morning.

If not, there is a good chance you have merely walked around in a great circle, which means there is a good chance you have spent the day with one blinder on.

If you have not moved at all, there's a good chance you have spent the day with two blinders on.

Have you read the opposition? Have you fired on your own position?

When you got up this morning, were you REALLY on the road to find out?
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