Return of the Blog

This blog is back because I want to acheive 3 goals:

1. Become a better writer

2. Develop my creativity

3. Impress possible future grad school advisors (hello!)

I'm reluctant to blog because it feels very narcissistic. On the other hand, writing publicly forces me to maintain a basic standard of quality. I'm also setting a goal - publicly - of keeping every post under 500 words. It's hard to write concisely but it's a skill I want to develop because I believe it's better to do something than nothing and if that effort has decent quality, that's even better. I also want to focus this blog on learning and developing technical and professional skills. Nobody needs to read about my feelings but maybe reading about tearing down laptops or changing my car's oil might be of interest to someone.

I have a new focus on developing creativity and "playful thought" because I find that the hardest thing about being an engineer is coming up with ideas and then implementing them. I'm curious to know if anyone else can relate to having a sense of apprehension over trying to make something new. I rarely write down, sketch or build my ideas because I'm afraid of failing. I am afraid to find out that I should have done some kind of complicated calculation or that I failed to do the proper analysis even though I'm an MIT engineer. I'm afraid of complexity, of my ignorance - I only want to work on things that I already know how to do. When I consider trying to build something new I feel afraid, I feel reluctant, and I feel overwhelmed. How will I ever design the best tool, when there are so many possibilities? What if I don't model it correctly? What if I make it too complicated and then I can't finish on time?

These are the fears that I know are holding me back from my personal projects and from achieving total success at work. But I'm going to try to use this blog to tackle those fears, because there are ways to deal with these demons. I can work on mastering back-of-the-envelope calculations that engineers use to approximate a solution, like beam bending or convection equations. I can get comfortable with writing down tons of ideas, even if they're crazy. I can make it a habit to build, build, build all the time by trying to make lots of things and getting used to failure. So let's get started!

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