Last year, I wrote a blog post titled “Uninspired.” And it was, by all means, uninspired. Today, I sit here feeling uninspired again. There’s really nothing that I want to write about. If I’m honest, my last few posts have felt this way. I’ve just picked something and forced it. But rather than force something that isn’t there, I’m going to explore this lack of inspiration. Why is there now nothing, where previously there was something? Why do I feel like nothing’s worth writing about? I think I know where to start…
I don’t feel like I’m an expert on anything. The Dunning-Kruger effect is summarized as “what happens when a person thinks they know something when they have not even figured out what is possible to know.” I feel like I’m now in a phase of my life where I thought I knew most of what there is to know about a lot of things. In other words, I’ve been on the top of Mount Stupid. And now, I see how I’ve been ignorant. I’m in a valley of despair, where I’m looking around me and all I see is mounds of knowledge, none of which I have. How then can I write about something when I’m so obviously an imposter? This is the root of the insecurity, leading to the lack of inspiration.
What makes things worse is the information age we live in. Left, right, and center, we are confronted by streams of information. Billions of people (and now, computers) are consistently contributing to a wealth of shared knowledge. Yes, not all of that information is of high quality, but it all feeds into a feeling that whatever I do, someone or something else has likely already done it better. So why bother?
Because someone, somewhere, may be looking for my perspective. Not the best perspective. Not the most knowledgeable. Just mine. They may also be lost and feeling uninspired. They may feel like, amidst the mountain of possibilities that life is serving up, there’s no chance they’ll find something that speaks to them. There’s no hope. But there is hope! Yes, the chance is small. But this is not a black hole. If anything, the wealth of information at our disposal teaches us that anything is possible. That, yes, we’re small beings in an unfathomable universe. But we should not dare to claim that no one wants to hear what we have to say. That is true ignorance: to insist that in this world, where so much evades our understanding, we know there is nothing. No, there is something.
Look, here it is. The something. I’m leaving it here. I’m no expert, but I have something worth sharing. And here it is.
Thanks for listening. Goodbye.
"Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing."
- Euripides