I'm still trying to find my wings in Brooklyn. Living in a city makes all the wonderful possibilities that much more both possible and impossible as the days pass. Three months down and I have made some great strides in my job while barely keeping any romantic life alive. I've joined and quit a gym and found a new love in practicing yoga. And the most noticeable has been that I broke a decent stride of ninety or so newsletters trying to develop a new audience.
For a long time now, I've been trying to find a niche in the blogging world that's more than my personal thoughts and adventures. Outside of the small circle that know and love me, what does the world know? I'm just another writer. And that's how it ought to be. You need to give something of value to capture eyes and attention now. And if you don't know me at all, you don't know what I have to offer.
And somehow I made the connection to a concept I've always held close - the Butterfly Effect. If you can get past the Ashton Kutcher flick, the Butterfly Effect is a fascinating concept from its origin of a meteorologist making a mathematical assumption to the blinding speed of the modern interconnected world. I know I just said a whole bunch of mumbo-jumbo there, if you're not familiar with the concept, but I'm hoping it can make sense to a new audience in time.
The Butterfly Effect essentially says that changing the initial conditions of an event can unpredictably and radically change the results of that event. The Butterfly Effect sort of explains why Ashton Kutcher lost his arms when he went back in time to change his weird childhood. I've been told it's the same story Ray Bradbury wrote about a hunter going back in time to nab a T-Rex in A Sound of Thunder, and I can't wait to read it. And it's the reason the fantasy of time-traveling to Nazi Germany and flicking Hitler in the nuts is a bad idea. Who knows what the world would become of that little twinge of pain for the world's most notorious dictator and the rest of us?
It might seem a bit counter-intuitive at first. It is not all about time travel and a great deal of our world is based on the idea that we have some delusions of predictability. We think we know how to live a life - go to school, get this job, marry this person, and squirt out some kids. And some would argue we need the delusions. Imagine how hard it would be to exist keeping the fact that you could die at any time in the front of your mind.
Life is unpredictable. And I'm not sure about you, but I'm thrilled by the chance possibility that just changing one tiny aspect of your life now could radically launch you into the future somewhere else you're not expecting.
Come to think of it: Could you have predicted five years ago where you are now? Three years ago? One?
The power is in the details and the seconds. This is what I want to write about now. You could experience it as enormous pressure or endless opportunity, the truth remains that it's unpredictable. So why not get out there and shake things up?
Until next time...
I explode into space.
-dan