Hello World!

I’m starting this blog primarily for my own benefit. I often struggle with writers block associated with completing my research papers, which has pushed me further towards burning out and caused me to miss conference deadlines that I was shooting for. All-in-all, this is not good. To try and remedy my struggles with writing, I’m trying a new tactic: writing a weekly blog.

I came to this decision after finding success with a similar solution to a different problem: I hated reading research papers. For those that are not aware, grad students are constantly reading research papers and it is not a fun task. Some papers are better than others, but, generally, they are all very boring, and very dense. Since the whole point of reading research papers is to extract information and reading papers is what I spent ~80% of my time doing, I started to treat all my tasks with that mindset. That sucked a lot of the joy out of my life and, as a result, I started to hate reading. My developing hatred for reading led to a vicious spiral of guilt, frustration, and burnout. in short: I tried to stop reading and that led to problems and then greater frustrations with, and hatred for, reading.

How did I overcome this hatred for reading? I started reading novels again. It’s the age-old techinique of trying to find why you enjoyed doing something in the first place. I used to read voraciously as a kid and found so much joy in it. I just needed to find that spark again. So, I picked up a Percy Jackson book (one of my favorite series growing up) and tried to read it. After a slow start, I started to read more and more for longer periods of time. Now, I no longer dread having to read research papers and try to keep up with reading new novels every few weeks. An added benfit: my reading seed has gotten faster.

Thus, I figure: might as well give it a try with writing. My friend Kristian Gumminger (@kgumminger) started writing sports blogs and he seems to really enjoy it (it also got him a freelance gig writing two articles a week about the Kansas City Chiefs for Arrowhead Pride). He’s inspired me to give it a try. So, I’ll be starting with writing about things I enjoy and am passionate about and see where things go from there.

Wish me luck!