Belabored Serendipity

I've made critical improvements to my recent posting on Serendipity.

I can't understand how I could have published it when it was still so blurry, but blurriness doesn't look blurry until you've thought of a sharper way. By the same token, the photos I took with my iPhone 5 look comically bad, though they seemed awesome at the time.

It's not actually so difficult to come up with fresh and credible observations, connections, and explanations. I've been explaining this as one of my themes, outlining how we fritter away attention and creativity on self-defeating whims (see postings tagged "Creativity", but start low, not with the more recent). It's also not hard for me to write clearly and entertainingly, after 35 years of professional experience. But it's really hard to introduce a fresh thought and make it land for readers. For starters, you need to judge whether it will actually land or not, which is like stepping into a cognitive house of mirrors.

I've been using chatGPT to poke me when I'm foggy or tedious. It doesn't fix stuff, it just points to problems, keeping me on my toes. But a chatbot learns faster than a human, so at this point it can see through my fog—and to my essential point—too easily. It's like the smart minder of a babbling idiot, discerning bright gist even from drooly mumblings.

This process never gets easier. Which is weird, because I'm mostly improving. My insight has sharpened and grown more fertile, and my writing skills continue to hone. But the two must struggle to keep pace with each other, which feels pretty vicious circle-ish. Plus, my cosmic background fogginess increases with age, layering in another unknowable fog factor, as I grow too foggy to notice my fog. My kingdom for a reliable fog detector!

But, hey, the venture feels like a fitting Zen art, so here I am. I proudly declare my foggy essay on serendipity newly razor sharp. To me, anyway. You? You might find it totally foggy. And next week it may seem a turd to me as well. And so it goes.