Apologies to @etiolation, if they are still around and it's a problem, for coopting this thread.

I want to start writing. My goal is to be a famous and well-compensated pundit with lots of beautiful young groupies and first class tickets spilling out of my inbox.

I'll settle for having a minor impact making someone's life a little better.

But, I really don't know how to get started in making it useful, how to engage in a broader community of writiers and develop and connect with an audience.

So I'm reaching out to the highest quality online community of which I am a part:

Is there anyone here who knows their writing has impacted another? Would you care to share the how's, the why's, and the wherefores?

Is anyone here a part of a writing group that's open to new members? Would you share?

Is there anywone here who has made money as a writer?

My particular writing focus is how to increase the level of "goodness" in the world. I don't even yet have a fully formed idea of what I think that is, perhaps a good topic for an essay. But, I don't even really know what an essay is. Somehow I got through a liberal arts education with decent grades, but don't seem to really know diddly squat about abstract thinking. More importantly, I don't have a well defined goal of the point of anything, with one exception: connection. The only time I truly feel at peace in this world is when I feel connected to another human. And it's a thing that perhaps a lot of folks take for granted, but which I was (presumably inadvertently) trained to avoid at all costs as very young person.

So, if you have any thoughts on how to develop focus and form, and identify venue, and raise profiles and get feedback, I'd be most obliged.

All the best and all the blessings

Take a look at the Tildes Statistics site. Couple things:

1, and most obvious: there has been a decline in users over the past few days for the first time that I'm aware of.
2: (I was going to make this point before the user decline occurred but it's probably moot now) Due to the scaling of the Y-axis, it appears that there is healthy user growth in the site. But if you look at the numbers, we're talking about user growth of roughly 60 people over the past month.

I know we want controlled growth, and I know we don't want to open it up to the masses. But we also want this site to succeed (i.e. provide interesting discourse and keep people coming back on a regular basis). I don't believe success can happen when growth is stagnant (or, declining!)

I don't think that the conversations are necessarily stagnant per se, in fact there's an impressive amount of thoughtful discussion relative to the size of the user base. But if a given topic is too niche (e.g. MLS football or MUDs, two of my interests), the odds of finding like-minded users to discuss with is obviously lower.

Is it time to consider some sort of growth campaign (one that is not reactionary a la the Reddit API changes) in order to infuse some new life into this awesome site?

I'm a big believer in the theme system proposed by CGP Grey (discussed in much more detail on the Cortex podcast), and have been thinking about what I would like my theme for 2022 to be. After realigning my financial situation this year through the (imaginitively named) Year of Finance, I want to spend some time focusing on myself as a person and my existence in the world.

Enter the Year of Authenticity. Recent circumstances and some serious meta-cognition have led me to the conclusion that I am not sufficiently honest enough about my values, beliefs, expression, and well, myself. I find myself bending to the various social situations I find myself in, and it feels very dishonest at times. So I plan to spend 2022 thinking more about the person that I want to be, being more true to that desire, and trying to align my various "selves" into an individual who I am confident being in any situation.

I already have a few things in mind that I expect to work on, including my public gender expression and my fear of expressing opinions in unfamiliar groups and situations. But I find myself wondering, how do other people experience the desire to be more authentic? Is this something any of my fellow Tilderen have ever spent time working on? What are your approaches to practicing authenticty? Do you have an idealised version of yourself which you work towards? Do you find yourself acting differently with different groups of people? Is this even something I should be worried about? Lets have a talk about it :)

Edit: The nice thing about a theme (watch the video if you haven't, it gives a good explanation) is that it's fuzzy, and it can mean a lot of things, or even change meaning when necessary.

A few have mentioned the idea of consistency, which is not really what I'm shooting for. I don't believe that there is a core, unchanging, self that I have inside me that I am wanting to unleash on an unsuspecting world. I know and embrace that as humans we are emotional, multi-faceted beings, and that changing social situations necessitate changing mannerisms. I don't expect to behave in the same with with my university professors as I do with my best friends of multiple decades. I haven't yet nailed down exactly what I do mean by authenticity, but I do know that it doesn't mean trying to be the same logical, consistent character to all people.

There's a reason I've started thinking about this journey for 2022 now, even before December: there's a lot of introspection and metacognition required for something like this. Being an intronaut can be scary and difficult, but I'm excited to see where it takes me! This whole process is just beginning, and I'm looking to gain insight into others' experiences to help frame my own view of what this year can/might/should mean for me. Thanks for everyone's responses so far <3

Dans la vie intérieure, le temps tient lieu d'espace.
(In the inner life, time takes the place of space.)
Simone Weil, La Pesanteur et la Grâce (Gravity and Grace)

Inside [the black hole's event horizon]… [what used to be a spatial
coordinate] is the time. … The singularity… is not a place in space; it
is a moment in time.
James B. Hartle, Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity

In my old poems I saw
the sentimental one
scenting sighs,    seeing scars
everywhere, twisting them
into words, arranging words
so they fit in a grid,
regular,    repeating.

Preoccupied, she wanted the answer
to the only question: What had made her
like this? An effect that sought the cause and
nothing else. Her city caught in a verdant
early summer day, light abounded; she
felt time had been running out silently.

How much has really changed ever since?

I now have an answer, and more.
She made me; cause, effect. Questions!
How will I be? What will I be?
What am I?

I am a tiny bit of what she wasn't:
the all-embracing space and time beyond
her self, her fear of being forgotten,
solitude unwitnessed, and pain futile.

I am not just her descendant either.
Holding her precious gift of exposed self,
I too am exposed to what I am not,
asking how much has changed, what I'm changing.

This is a new one I wrote today.

Edit: replaced one "the" with "an".