The Point of Writing

By far the most vital thing I have learned about writing is this
"Write about what you know"
        Yet even though this is indeed important, the most useful things I have ever written either covered a new subject, causing me to gather data as I went along, or covered an old subject but I would find myself being taken in a new direction. As I continued writing I would come to a new conclusion during the writing process and not before or after. I feel that, if the words written lead me to an entirely new idea that I could appreciate, perhaps if a reader were to follow my train of thought then maybe they could come to the same conclusions.

        For this reason it is difficult for me to recycle knowledge, by merely writing about something so obvious as to be common sense. But the purpose of writing is then two-fold;
To take important knowledge and record it (a bit of a paradox there since the most important knowledge is consequently the hardest to forget)
To share knowledge that we find important, either because it has helped us, it was hard to come by, or it is very new\rare.

          We record knowledge for ourselves, eventually perhaps for our friends and family (although digital writing has only been around for a decade, not nearly long enough to have people passing harddrives down from parent to child).  We also take valuable information about the world and try to share it. With the newest knowledge being reported to every one as "news", the most unique knowledge as blogs and tweets, and the hardest to come by knowledge as specialty journals, corporate laboratory reports, and educational textbooks. The newest information describes changes and is typically responded to with changes in turn, liable to be used in legal policy, such as knowledge of a new synthetic drug being made and abused or of an act of war against another country. The most unique information can be recorded as a world record, a new hit pop song,  or the knowledge that two famous celebrities are having children. While hard to acquire knowledge is generally scientific, to be used to manufacture a new technology or to prove a scientific theory about nature's laws, psychological processes, or mathematic equations.

            Being that this is not a blog I would not wish to fill my protfolio with personal facts, unless they are perhaps of rare or life changing events that someone can draw parallels between mine and their own. I am not an investigative journalist watching the world for new occurrences and I know of few unique facts beyond those concerning my own life. The best I can hope this portfolio to accomplish is to share knowledge that was hard fought to acquire and realizations I have stumbled upon by mixing together different facts and interpretations. Of course one would have to have enough self worth to appreciate novel ideas for their value and to avoid the error of Commons. That being the greatest obstacle to, not the aquisition of knowledge but to the spread of it. When someone has a profound realization about themselves or the world around them, but feels that it was so obvious that they are embarrassed for not having come up with it sooner, at the same time they feel that the realization makes so much sense as to already be "common knowledge" to most people. This stems from assuming that if they came up with this idea then the chances are that some person, if not hundreds or even millions of people, have probably already come up with the same idea at some point.

        For example, when someone has a slip of the tongue it is obvious that it is because some pressing but hidden impulse is acting upon them. We know that now because Freud wrote about it and had it label the Freudian Slip, if someone were to explain this to you chances are you already know and think that his explanation makes so much sense as to be downright obvious. Yet while Freud could have just said "that is obvious, so obvious only a stupid person might not know why we have the slip" and decided not to write about it. But he assumed what he had was a novel thought and was interesting enough for people to want to hear about it.

          I assume all the best ideas are only so because they make so much sense. but then again the Greeks assumed thunder meant that the god Zeus was merely having a bad day... I guess assumptions are useful so long as they are built on a factual foundation, being only novel if the average person (someone like you or me) is ignorant to them. Iam sure to a child most thoughts would be considered both novel and important, which is why adults never pay attention to their kids words, beyond them granting insight into their character and development. This is only true of your own kids and to an extent those of your relatives and friends, when it comes to the kids of a stranger most adults couldn't care less about their "novel and interesting" ideas.  That means that only someone that has had many repeated experiences, or a very intelligent person with drastically fewer experiences, could have a novel approach. While someone that has lived a unique life, full of experiences that set them apart from their peers, would have the most interesting stories.

        Following this logic, despite not spending decades practicing psychology I have definitely read, wrote, talked about, and thought about more psychological processes than the average person. I have lead a blessed life full of changes, environments, friends, anxieties, and disappointments to where if the conclusions I come to can be novel enough I can make a portfolio that is full of good stories and insightful discoveries.

        Except for this article, this is more of an explanation and too close to a journal entry to be relevant to almost anyone but me. You would honestly only be reading this article if you read my 1st, and hopefully next couple, articles and been rewarded in some way. So I guess I owe you an apology for boring you, dear readers. I promise I will endeavour to be more novel and interesting in the future, and always keep your interests at heart.

I suppose having read through it all I could reward you with a small bonus fact about me and my interesting life. You can just ask in the reviews.