Colin Wright's Blog, page 2

Age 40

At 40, a man living in the United States has used up more than half of his statistical years; the average man dies at around 75 years old in this country.

That’s a lot of years! It’s not enough; I’d like to keep going, ad infinitum. Tons to experience, plenty left to learn. But I’ll take what I can get. It’s a hell of a lot more years than even very recent generations could have hoped for.

I tend to think of age a bit like I think of generational labels like Boomer and Millennial and Gen Z...

Recognizing, Understanding, Fixing

The things I’m most embarrassed to have done over the course of my life have almost universally been the result of self-consciousness.

I’ve worked on this a lot over the years, and the aspects of myself that I’m most proud of (and which enable the most joy and satisfaction) today, are the result of these changes.

This sort of change isn’t straightforward: it requires recognizing what’s going wrong, understanding the problem, and then eventually fixing it.

Simply noticing that something’...

Acceptance

I know several people who are currently struggling to accept aspects of reality that don’t align with 1. who they believed they would be, 2. how they believed they would feel, or 3. what they believed the world would look like at this moment in time.

When the facts on the ground don’t align with our preferences (and assumptions with where they would end up), that can be difficult to bear.

But if we refuse to work these data points and (at times, truly uncomfortable) truths into our mental ...

Cognitive Overload

When there’s a lot happening all at once, it’s not uncommon to experience cognitive overload: a nonstop feeling of overwhelm, memory problems, difficulties with focus, and an inability to healthily (and thoughtfully) deal with any volume of complexity.

“A lot” is a relative term, of course, and there will be moments in which near-tornadic levels of chaos swirl around us, but we’re in exactly the right mindset to wrangle those eddies into order (or in some cases to join in on the action, embra...

Another Year

Another year around the sun, another 365 days tallied, another torrent of experiences weathered and another boatload of lessons learned.

Last December, my life was different from how it is today.

I’ve had loved ones experience all sorts of traumas. I’ve suffered from, learned about, and attempted to ameliorate (unsuccessfully at first, but more successfully over time) several disruptive medical issues.

I’ve altered (and had altered by external forces) my day-to-day routines, rituals, an...

Tensions

Writing and sharing words would superficially seem to be the same thing no matter where you write and share them.

But the number of words, the sorts of words you use, and the amount of focus (or lack thereof) folks on the other end can be expected to invest in your words changes the nature of writing and sharing: publishing a novel isn’t the same as writing short-form copy that’ll appear over a TikTok video, nor is writing a script for a long-form YouTube explainer the same as scrivening a ma...

Which Ends?

A new working paper suggests that there’s an imbalance in the benefits of working with artificial intelligence tools: some people get more out of them than others.

And while part of that segmentation has to do with ability—those with relatively less-developed writing skills will tend to get more out of using AI writing tools than someone who’s a great writer, for instance—part of what determines how much value we get from these things is the accuracy of our skill-related self-assessment.

S...

What’s My Thing?

When starting a new creative project—any kind of project, from writing a book to designing a new type of semiconductor—one of the better questions to start with is “what do I offer that’s distinct from what’s already available?”

This isn’t always going to be the most vital question: some areas can sustain several near-identical burger joints, for instance, and part of the appeal of some fiction sub-genres is that the books they encompass are similar enough to each other that they all evoke th...

Staggeringly Valuable

I probably use my laptop, a 2021 MacBook Pro, more than any other tool I own. It enables and amplifies my efforts in countless ways, and as a consequence I consider the few thousands dollars I paid for it to be money well-spent.

I don’t drive my car very often—I only really use it for roadtrips. But it doesn’t require much upkeep, cost me a relative pittance to acquire (as cars go), and makes those overland jaunts to far-flung locales feasible, as otherwise I’d have to spend a fortune on rent...

Scattered Thoughts About Random Things

Some of the most incredible creative output of the past ten years (and arguably before that, too) has been created in support of video games and similar cultural artifacts; if you ever need aesthetic inspiration, google around for concept art, soundtrack music, and/or play a game like Disco Elysium (the writing and voice acting in this game!), and you’ll see what I’m talking about.Many of us have trouble meeting up with friends (and acquaintances who might become friends) as often as we would pr...