Tag: About the Blog

Housecleaning

I toggled the thing to make this site visible for the first time about 45 seconds ago.

  • The site will get a bit more colorful, I picked the blandest template possible and will add a cover photo / logo / etc. later. Still under construction.
  • In addition to “normal” blog posts, I’m trying to post a book review for every non-fiction book I read this year. As of now, the only one missing is David Brooks’ The Social Animal, which was actually the first book I read in 2019.
  • I don’t usually read so much pop psychology back to back, so I’m not sure how I ended up with 4 of the first 5 books of the year in that category. The next few will likely be history / philosophy / economics.
  • Still working on post formatting and tagging conventions. Maybe they’ll get better or worse.
  • The formula for “Reading Time” that I try to remember to put at the top of each post is minutes = (0.22 * word count + 25) / 60 plus an arbitrary adjustment based on not totally trusting the formula I found online.

Happy reading!

Hello World

Reading time: 5 minutes

This post is about me and my blog.  I couldn’t think of a graceful way to start.  First a summary, then a little about me, then a little about the blog.

Summary:

My name is Steve, and I’m a bookaholic.  I am enthralled by the complex, chaotic, interconnected, infinitely detailed world we live in, and figuring it all out is my passion.  Very few topics are completely outside my interests; the areas I keep coming back to are psychology, economics, anthropology, history, and philosophy.  As of today, I am working on two nonfiction books, three works of fiction, and one book of literary analysis.  My dream is to retire from my career in corporate finance so I can be a full-time scholar.

This blog has two purposes.  The first is just to start writing; I feel like I have some things that I want to say that someone out there may enjoy or even benefit from.  The second is to serve as a training ground to hone my craft of writing for an external audience before attempting to publish anything official.  Sometimes I try to think that there is some specific set of topics that will be the focus, but that is unlikely to happen.

I hope that you enjoy the time you spend here.  Please contribute through the comments with your ideas and book / website recommendations.  If you would like to contribute an article or suggest a topic, please contact me via email.

About Me:

I grew up in a small town a couple hours from the nearest major city.  My brother and I started our first business together when we were still in single digits.  I started my first “official” job when I was [legally old enough to work]; by my senior year in high school I was driving a forklift, had a side gig as a janitor, and was taking classes at the local community college. 

I went off to a major state school where I worked in a bookstore during the semesters, had several internships at various manufacturing companies, and graduated with an engineering degree in 2010.  

After graduation, I headed off to the big city to start my career.  As of this writing in early 2019, I’ve done time in IT, operations, finance, and planning at three companies which between them have given me exposure to distribution, manufacturing, food, and oil and gas.  To the surprise of my high school self, I have worked very hard for long stretches of that time. 

When I started my first job (designing software), the company I worked for had a booklist suggested by the CEO and other contributors.  De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America was on the list, and though I had always read a lot of fiction, that book got me fired up about learning.  I started keeping track of how much I read in 2013; since then, I have averaged 48 nonfiction books and 16 works of fiction each year.  Every knowledge-rock you turn over has 50 more rocks underneath and it’s knowledge-rocks all the way down.  Someone smarter would probably pick a specialty to master, but I can’t pick.

About the Blog:

I first got the hankering to start sharing what I learned and thought shortly after that experience with De Tocqueville.  Droning at hapless dinner dates didn’t sate the urge (or garner many second dates) and even though blogging was popular, I didn’t feel that I could claim to have anything to say. “But how can I possibly presume to explain things to people when I haven’t even read the Muqaddimah?” I might have said. 

Well, I still haven’t read the Muqaddimah, but it’s on my shelf.  Just as soon as I read the Quran so that I have the proper context, and when I finish the books I’ve already started (currently Frank Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit; Lajoux and Elson’s The Art of M&A Due Diligence; a collection of the essays of William James; and Burgess’s The Age of Stonehenge), I’ll get to it. 

My “to read” list currently holds over 500 books.  Given that only about half of the 48 nonfiction books I read each year are already on my list, and that I add about 100 books to the list each year, I figured I might as well give up on being knowledgeable and start writing now.

So, a few weeks ago I registered a website.  Ultimately there are two main purposes.  The first is purely as an outlet for the things I want to talk about and hope to find / create a community for.  My most persistent interests are at the intersection of psychology and economics, economics and anthropology, philosophy and history, and everything else and everything else.  On one hand I doubt that I’ll ever contribute much that is truly novel.  On the other hand, if I can help spread the word about some cool ideas, maybe it will catalyze someone else to have an idea and follow through on it in the disciplined, effortful way required to make a real contribution. 

The second purpose is to be a proving ground for my writing skills and my ideas.  I was a good writer in high school, but (a) that was high school, and (b) high school has been a little while now.  I have two nonfiction works in progress which will at some point contribute essays (some are already written in draft form), as will a book of literary analysis (currently only a rough outline).  The three works of fiction will probably spin off some essays, but I doubt that I will ever post excerpts.