MAT-2020 Syllabus. I guess I just think I’m interesting…
By: Michael Tocco
Tags: Blogger, Blog, Journal, Blogging, Journaling

Why, Mike?

I guess I just think I’m an interesting person, is that odd of me to say? I’m interested in the thoughts I have about things. I also think I have interesting friends and I would love if more people could know all the interesting things they say. Do most people think, “I’m a very interesting person”? I’m not sure if they do, it doesn’t really matter anyway.

This will be more of a public journal rather than a blog; mostly because I don’t really know how to blog, but I’ve learned so far that not knowing how to do something is no excuse to not try it if it interests you.

These are meant to be informal, I have enough stress in my life at the moment so I want to keep it low pressure. However, I still want to do my best to be as rigorous as I can here with my thinking and writing. I do keep a private journal, but I think making a public journal as well is a good idea for a few reasons. It’s a great place to form ideas into real statements about the world, I can’t just type something and go “I know what I mean by this and that’s good enough”. It holds me accountable to make sense and forces me to have some conviction about my schema. There is also some risk of looking foolish so that makes me more carful with the things I say and more critical of my opinions. I also have ideas that I think are too interesting to be kept locked away in a OneNote folder. Sure, I like the attention, but that shouldn’t even matter. Of course, I want to impress people with my writing if I can. When it comes to my writing, I use to want people to think in amazement, “wow, that was smart”; but now I just want people to think, “wow, that was honest”. It’d be nice to be smart, and it’d be great to be wise, but I just want to be honest most of all. If I can reveal truths to myself through prose and impress people in the process, thats two birds with one stone. Becoming a better thinker is also important to me. Two great ways to improve at thinking is by reading and writing. If I’m consistent with reflecting on the thing I learn, I’ll grow as a writer and my growth will be recorded. It might be fun to see a progression of my writing proficiency as post more stories, and hopefully it’ll sharpen my mental tools.

You can prove your point better with a blog because all you have is 26 characters to represent yourself. At first glance, all someone knows about me is that there is a seperate “I” to contend with and this “I” has something to say. Past that, the only way they can form any opinion about me is if they start reading. You can’t determine what someone looks like only from their writing. So when someone reads these without knowing my demographics, I really am entering their mind with a blank slate. Any ideas they get about what my demographics might be through reading my prose and having not seen what I look like are only their personal projections.

I hope to make this a place where I’ll feel comfortable to speak my mind. I want to attempt to traverse nuanced points here, so I encourage respectful comments that critique my point of view. I am not a politician, a philosopher, a scientist, so I know I will most certainly have uninformed opinions to varying degrees, and may make a few mistakes because of it. I am a common person so I will probably make common mistakes when dealing with complex topics. This is something I also want to encourage, making mistakes, so it can be something we can normalize as a culture.

I’ll also be promoting my Medium very casually via my socials. Pretty much only through Instagram and Twitter on occasion when I feel partially confident about a certain post. But no IG posts that’s a little too heavy handed for me. I think it’s best it’s only through stories so that way only the most interested people see it. I only want people to discover me through Medium (either by accident via stumbling down a rabbit hole of super low-key amateur bloggers, or via a Medium algorithmically generated profile suggestion) or through a suggestion from a close friend, or from my professional endeavors. That way I can at least somewhat ensure that anyone who lands on this blog has a real reason to be here. It’s not that I don’t want people I know to see this, if they do that’s fine, but I’d like to start from scratch here with curious strangers. It’s just easier to build a trusted community that way.

Here are some themes I’ll probably touch on often:

Arts

STEM

Romance

Philosophy

Personal/Professional Life

So, that’s why I’m starting a blog. I look forward to us growing together.

Michael Anthony Tocco