A lovely lack of purpose
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I'm writing this stuff with completely no purpose. Thus this text
only adds to the "noise of the world" without any goal, meaning or
significance. Why am i writing this then? And why would i bother to
put it in a public place?
Well, for the first question; "Why am i writing this?" the most
important reason is that i enjoy writing texts on my computer. I
would not consider myself to be a writer in any way, but i enjoy
writing. It's not that i merely enjoy converting my thoughts into
sentences on paper. I also enjoy the aesthetics of typing texts
into my computer.
I'm writing texts in a very simple text editor inside a terminal.
For the less tech-savvy, it's a black screen with white characters.
No icons, colors or graphics. Just the text and you and nothing to
distract you. 80's style.
Writing in such an editor is quite a pleasure. I enjoy the way the
characters and paragraphs look visually as they form. I enjoy the
blackness of the screen with the white characters. I enjoy the
monospace font, limiting myself to only ASCII characters and to a
80 column boundary. Not because it's necessary to do so in the
second decade of the 2000's, but just because it's appealing to
myself.
I haven't got much to write about i suppose. I have no ideas that
would change anybody's life or great stories to tell and thus
there's no necessity for me to write anything. But i just enjoy it.
So in that sense, that's the only purpose for me writing this.
"Why would i bother to put this in a public place?" Actually i
don't know. I mean, i am pretty certain that this text might not be
read by anyone. But IF it is read by somebody, somewhere and if the
reader is still reading up to this point, i like the idea that
through this text i connected with somebody in a very humble way to
say "Hi! I exist and so do you apparently! That's pretty awesome
isn't it?"
It's the same as putting a message in a bottle and throwing it into
the sea. You don't expect anybody to read your message. More
importantly the message itself might not be more introcate than
"Hello! This is a message in a bottle if you're reading me now, you
probably found the bottle! That's awesome!" but the thought that
somebody might read your message someday is pretty exiting in
itself.
I think placing texts in this specific public place (An anonymous
old-school webhoster) is also much more appealing than for example
placing texts on social media like facebook. First of all, on
social media like Facebook i most likely wouldn't be anonymous and
while what i'm writing isn't particularly shocking, being anonymous
gives me the feeling that i can write more "freely".
Secondly, with social media you get immediate feedback from people
in your social circle. And while it would seem appealing to get
immediate feedback for some people, i thouroughly enjoy the
boundaries you get with placing texts in a non-interactive place
like this. The text can float around unread in a dusty corner of
the internet without any purpose. And that's perfectly fine.
I enjoy the message in the bottle idea that somebody someday might
read the message someday and think "meh, i go view some more
video's of cats now". I think that's much more appealing than
standing around a tiny pool with your family and friends, and toss
a bottled message into the pool and be surprised if one the other
people around the pool reads your message.
The difference is in the intention. This text has no purpose. There
are no expectations. I just enjoyed writing it. And now it's
dropped into the sea for somebody to find... and toss it back.
