Feb 9, 20090
The reason I never got a tattoo (but started a blog)
I was on the edge of starting a blog several times. I even have one older ’starting a blog’ article. But one problem always stopped me. I write something and it stays out there for ages. Would I still agree with my articles in five years? What if my topics drift? Google is watching.
This time around, the main impulse to start blogging was my avatar’s desire to find his own folk. In my life so far, my physical body met friends and colleagues mostly as a consequence of location and circumstances: high-school friends, university friends, friends and colleagues from each SAP project. Sometime in November last year, my avatar told my physical body: ‘You slave of coincidence! Let me loose into the World Wide Web and I will bring back people based on keywords. Give me a blog to live in and I will assemble a social circle 2.0. Imagine, techy start-up people, enterpreneurs, adventurers, SaaS, cloud, mashup and 2.0 pioneers, ubergeeks, scientists and academics, Bono, retired presidents, and also existentialists, zen monks, revolutionaries, risk-takers, lifestyle nomads searching for their own thing and the precious normal guys who don’t need all these fancy names. My own League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.’
Pondering this idea, the usual concern about the longevity of thoughts and blogposts reappeared. And I remembered I had a similar dilemma years ago. When I was seventeen, I once turned up at home with a safety pin in my ear, and announced I would get a barcode tattooed on my neck. It was in part a cheerful provocation, and the safety pin was actually fake, but I was really excited about the idea of getting a tattoo. Tattoo! The mark of a man. While I expected fierce opposition from my parents, my mother just turned a whiter shade of pale and said: ‘Wait what your father will say’. So later over dinner, I tried it again, and my dad didn’t actually say much either, except ‘What if you don’t like the tattoo in a few years?’ I brushed it off, but noted that the obvious quality of a tattoo is outliving the pleasure of provocation. Fair enough, I thought, would I still like my barcode in five years? Ten? What then, a ruined life? I thought about it and just didn’t find a good answer. So I gave it up.
I still remember that episode, because other experiences demonstrated a similar pattern. A tattoo is highly specific (a single pattern chosen from an infinite set). The impact is long-lasting, and cannot be changed later (except made larger and worse). In its general form, the question is: How can you choose today, when you don’t know tomorrow?
So after a few years of occasional contemplation, here’s my blog. I now understand that starting a blog is just as easy as choosing a school, or a career, or a wife. Writing an article is just another act with present data and long-term consequences (if things go well, that is – many articles are actually quite irrelevant). I am comforted by the fact that until time travel era, every important act will be made with limited data. Journalists must know this. Everyone knows this. The point: We all act despite uncertainty. We do it and live with it. (How? To sense uncertainty, but not be paralyzed by it, is for me one of the brain’s most magical abilities).
The cage door is open, this blog is my avatar let loose. May he hunt you, keyword folk, and bring you to me in his RSS teeth and email paws. Fifteen years later, while still not knowing tomorrow, I am finally getting my digital tattoo. The mark of a man. And look, it’s not so late, I am just six years behind the bleeding edge, three years behind Guy Kawasaki (notice the ‘Not that you can hold me to this’ :), two years behind Tim Ferriss, one year behind Leo Babauta and a month behind Randy Cooray.
Oh yes, what will I write about? I will write about that.
