Cutting the Red Ribbon - Experimenting!

I’ve been driving myself mad by not knowing where to start with my mountain of blog drafts and ideas waiting to be edited or even started. I thought I had to make the best “first blog post ever,” but it turns out, I want this to be more casual than anything else. I want to experiment. I want to write more as a habit (one of the goals of this blog actually) , and while I have the urge, material, and the time—I keep getting in the way of my own goals. I watched a great video recently that introduced me to the idea of this quadrant of ambition and curiosity, originally defined by Anne-Laure Le Cunff where basically, we can get trapped to perfectionism, escapism, or worse cynicism. These are feelings I often feel, but was interested in what “experimental” mindset would mean to me.

I like the idea of maintaining an experimental mindset as much as possible. From my own experience, it really does boil down to habit and framing of mind. Experimenting means being able to abandon what I think is proper and be okay with failing, and maintaining (my often overflowing) sense of creativity. I am the only one who cares. That is a mantra I’ve been saying throughout my graduate degree thus far, and I mean to keep it till I see myself having fun along my way to the finish line.

With that, I have had a TIME trying to get my head wrapped around this particular issue I am having. Planning. Journaling. Researching. Notetaking. My favorite topic and thing to do is to research various notetaking methods and processes. It has become my number one way to procrastinate. I am stagnating! And admittedly, most of my drafted blogs will not see the light of day outside of my Obsidian Vault because it is simply me arguing on the merits of analog versus digital notes, among other things. I am determined to experiment. It may be good to use this blog as an accountability buddy, a quick check-in, plus any other things I find myself wanting to write about. Thanks for attending this red-ribbon cutting!

Ciao, Tariq