​In an effort to keep this stack of words from wandering too far from my initial point, I —luckily— have these embedded notes where I can entertain a tangential rabbit hole musing till it exhausts itself. So. Why would I not care if anyone reads this stuff? Well, in this age of 'content', I think most people have lost sight of what writing is about. Or, even more likely, they still haven't discovered what it's about. No offense, dear reader, but I think the reader doesn't matter at all while writing. And to give much if any thought to a reader while writing is like being a good person because God might spank you when you die and you have to answer for you sins. i think it's a hollow reason to be a good person. Being a good person should be the reward unto itself. Writing for an audience honestly isn't much different than being a prostitute who wears lingerie and costumes most desired by the customers. And I mean it that harshly. To write is, fundamentally a selfish act. Or at least, it should be, and if it's not, the writing is cheapened by the imagined gaze of others. The whole universe be damned, these words exist not for it, but for the effect they have on my brain and the way they shape the person that I will be as I move through life having written these words. So why post it online? Well, to be honest, I did that because I was teaching myself how to code and I just happened to be working through the exercise of building a blog to understand how CRUD apps work. I had a bunch that I'd written and just plopped it in for shits and giggles. Progressing from that was more out of curiosity than anything. Tinkered Thinking became an exercise in creating the environment to foster and explore something that I genuinely loved doing: playing with words. That it's lead to far more than I imagined is kind of funny to me. Self published books, a legit published book, even Award Finalist recognition. While a younger, desperately ambitious and insecure version of myself who sought to be a writer would have salivated like a starved wolf coming across deer with a broken leg hearing of such things in his future, to me now, these developments strike me as . . . cute. I nod, and chuckle, and move on. Luckily I'd put in the time before those things happen so they don't have any of the soul-altering gravity that they would have had for a younger, insecure writer. Am I great writer? Eh, no. could I be? Sure, if I had the ability to devote the needed time. And believe me, if I could spend 6-12 hours a day writing and editing and playing with these funny, slippery little units we call words, I absolutely would. But unfortunately, as things stand right now, life requires more.​

​For what it's worth, I don't think much discipline is required. You just need enough to get a habit going, and a habit is a bit like a fire. Hard to start, but when it's roaring, you just occasionally throw another log on, and it keeps burning. but starting a fire is difficult and requires time and intense focus. Habits are the same: you just need some painful discipline for a month, maybe two, and then the habit starts to gain momentum and you can ease off with all that willed discipline and the thing just keeps going on a kind of magical autopilot.