An internet-worthy life

Today I have been mostly pondering the phrase, “an internet-worthy life.” I’m not sure why this thought popped into my head while in the shower this morning, but I think it has something to do with having started this blog.

Since discovering the internet at university in the mid-90s I’ve started a number of blogs, most of which were short-lived and rarely updated. A few of them served a very important purpose in my life, from helping me process some key events to kick-starting a period of awakening and self-discovery that no doubt I’ll cover in this blog at some point in the future.

After wandering down memory lane for a while, digging out old content and reviewing thoughts from years past, I’m given to wonder why I’ve favoured creating blogs in time of introspection, and that’s where that phrase popped up.

This is the (tentative) conclusion I’ve reached: I want to have “an internet-worthy life.”

I follow a lot of people on the internet, some through their blogs, others on Facebook or Twitter. Some of them I’ve met in real life, but most I doubt I could pick out of a crowd. I also doubt that many of them, including those I’ve met, would know me if we ran into each other on the street.

Most of them are from one or both of two different worlds: photography and technology startups. I see the lens through which they share their lives and I’m envious. I’m well-aware that the lens is far from reality, but I can’t help but compare the things they’re doing with the things I’m doing, or not doing.

For some reason I believe that if I have a blog, a place where I’ve promised to post something interesting every day, I’ll be motivated to do post-worthy things. I believe, or more probably hope, that it will fuel any residual sparks in my life to become roaring flames that everybody and their cat would want to read about. Surely there are enough cats on the internet that the things I do and the things that are done to me will interest them?

And then I sit here staring at a blank screen and the only interesting thing that happened today is that I thought a lot about how uninteresting my life is. So I’ve written about that.

I’m trying to put a positive spin on this and see it this way: at least I’m posting something. This is a step up from my usual attempts to start a daily blog. I think the key is to write every day even when I don’t think I have anything interesting to say. I’m kinda scared that this will be the case most days, but on some level I’m also aware that I have a pretty active brain and on most days something will be running around my head that I will be able to write about it. As for whether it’s interesting I’ll let you be the judge.

In the meantime I’m going to introduce something I want to add to every post, a TIL (Today I Learned). They say every day is a school day and it’s definitely true in my experience, but I’ve found that I rarely take the time to notice the things I learn as things I’ve learnt. Anyway, here’s the first which came from Quora:

TIL: If you had a golf ball that doubled in density every hour it would take seven days for it to weigh the same as the known universe. Source.