August 5th, 2020
Currently, I am reading through the prefaces and introductions for the various books I’ve received to get an idea of the order in which I should read them. As I believe I’ve stated before I want to finish the Bible before reading some other works since the majority of other literary works are based on the Bible or have been influenced by it in some way. The young adult pastor of the church I’ve been attending sent me What is the Bible? by Rob Bell, but he wanted me to finish the Bible and have a discussion before I begin reading that book. Likewise, I have Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Friedman which I have open and faced down since I’m reading through the preface and introduction at the moment. The reason I wanted to write a post was that I was thinking that in the future I would want to share what I’m learning with the world and I was thinking about how best to do that. Some of the authors are academics who are professors at Universities and they provide scholarly and authoritative works and while I enjoy those kinds of works and would like to emulate them, I don’t think that I would be able to in my lifetime. It’s my current opinion that one needs to be an expert in their field before they can make an authoritative claim. Even if I was to write something profound, I would likely not find much success since I would not be considered an expert in that field. This isn’t to say that it’s not possible, but I don’t think I have the attention span for it nor the desire (I like making money as an engineer too much). On the other end of the spectrum is fiction which is written primarily by non-scholarly authors it seems. I haven’t really given it much serious thought, but I think if I wanted to write something successful, it would have to be fiction. However, this is easier said than done. A couple of things I have going against me are that I have ADHD, which does not lend itself well to tasks around compiling a novel, and that being more analytically minded, I tend to gravitate towards the more authoritative forms of writing. Also, not to say I’m a perfectionist, but I would like to write about a lot of things and I don’t know how I’d start and end it. Some things that I might like to talk about would be information overload from the internet as well as the vast amount of literature on a variety of subjects. Everything is built on the things that came before it, nothing is made in a vacuum and it can get quite overwhelming at times. Another thing I’ve had thoughts about is the idea that the office of the President of the United States is the figure that Americans should be able to look up to. Regardless of their party affiliations, they should be able to instill confidence in the American people and in the eyes of foreign dignitaries. This, of course, is in response to the way the current president Donald Trump behaves. He doesn’t instill within me a sense of confidence for him and I don’t think he should represent the American people. I’ve never voted in an election before, but now might be the first time if COVID-19 doesn’t keep me at home (I am very much in favor of mail-in ballots). I’m not sure how I feel about Joe Biden politically, but I feel that he is a better alternative to Donald Trump in terms of how he behaves, however, it should be noted that I’ve been keeping up with the election only in passing and my views would likely change were I to get entrenched in the various political arguments. Part of my reading will hopefully get me to a point where I can start to dive into political readings and form a more robust opinion. Other things that I think would be interesting to include would be having ADHD and the current state of science, and the future of space travel. In conclusion, as I’m reading the Bible and these various works of fiction and non-fiction I get the sense that I want to write about what I’m learning and share it with the world. It would most likely be fiction, but that remains to be seen.