works are never finished, only abandoned in despair

Originally published June 1, 2015

I've never been persistent or dedicated enough to get really good at something. If you're into aesthetics about transience, like wabi-sabi or mono no aware, you might find some kernel of beauty to appreciate here, but you know what would have been more beautiful than this? The things I would have done with persistence and dedication.

To this day this is the coolest thing I've ever made. It's not even that cool.

No one ever told me blogging had to be for an audience.

I've given up on a lot of things. My dad tried to get me to learn a musical instrument. I recently stopped practicing juggling. You should look at the list of projects I've started and not done anything substantial with before abandoning. This list doesn't exist; I'll never get around to finishing it.

Okay, so I can't make art or other cool stuff. That's not actually a tragedy. There's plenty of good art. It basically means I'll not be as cool and have a harder time getting laid. What I see as actually important is that this lack of persistence and dedication means I never learned lots of math or physics or philosophy or programming or biology or whatever, so I can never do important research.

Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I had, like, an older brother or something, someone who always told me to keep going.