It recently occurred to me that the amount of time I have available each day to pursue free thought--my term for mental activity that is not directed towards a specific purpose or task--has dwindled down to a few sporadic and all too brief moments throughout the day. It's really not surprising considering that I'm in my twenties, am a graduate student in the physical sciences, and frequently spend my free time socializing with friends at bars, shops, or the movies. These considerations, coupled with the all-too-often cited "information overload" of the digital age have left me feeling bit anxious. Free thought, I believe, is the thing that my brain has been desiring for some time. Unfortunately, this anxiousness is its only way of communicating its need to my consciousness.
I came to this realization because for all times in my life until the past few years I enjoyed the liberty of letting my mind run wild in pursuit of its whims. A leisurely childhood in the country and a college career full of frequent breaks and travel provided fantastic settings onto which I could project my overactive consciousness. This would in turn make way for what is, I suspect, an even more powerful subconsciousness to process and make sense of my position in this world. I've always been an overactive thinker, but I never considered the effect of eliminating the freedom (in terms of time and energy) of the brain to make its random walk over the data it receives until now. The effect, at least for me, I believe, is the anxiety that hints at something that my mind is missing but needs to feel satisfied.
So I created this blog to help me place my thoughts into words, which by doing so might help reclaim some of that time during the day that was once dedicated to free thought. I find that when I write, the end result is almost never what I intended it to be from the start. This suggests that while I write both my conscious and subconscious are acting in concert to create something akin to the products from my unencumbered mind.
The grander purpose is that I wish to create my own philosophy upon which I can base my actions, thoughts, and conclusions. I've come to believe that people give meaning to their own lives and for me it is in analyzing and placing this world in a context with which I can admire its beauty and complexity. But this can only be done once I wrestle from it the essential facts and shape them into some meaningful form, as humans are meant to do. Intellect was not bestowed upon us to simply reflect on reality; we were meant to transform a piece of it into something that we can claim as our own, even if it be the tiniest fraction of what we know of as existence.
Here is an older but interesting article on a trip undertaken by scientists to go off the "grid": http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html#.
