Whether you meant to end up here or not, welcome to my blog! Here, you’ll find links, articles, videos, images, and more that I find interesting, inspirational, amusing, thought-provoking, and assumption-challenging, in addition to random tidbits that I feel like sharing with you all. Enjoy it!
Meaning
Wherever we are, we’re in the middle. We can see as far ahead of us as we’ve already left behind us. Think of it this way: When you were 5 years old, you could look 4 years back, and imagine about 4 years ahead. Similarly, when you’re 40, most people think in terms of their past 40 years, and project about 50 years into the future.
Another way of looking at this idea is that at every new horizon we reach, we can suddenly see newer and more spectacular horizons still to come. Say you worked your whole life toward the goal of becoming CEO of a company. As soon as you reach that goal, new dreams and goals suddenly pop into being—why not run an even bigger company, or start a second business, or run for public office, or something else entirely?
“Another Middle” therefore signifies that there’s always more to learn and discover, and there are always new ways to look at the world. Personally, I also take it to mean that there’s never any rush to get anywhere or accomplish anything in particular, since there’s nowhere to go—you’re already Here right Now, and there’s nowhere else to be. So have some fun with life!
Content
Since this is as much a personal blog as it is a “professional” one (whatever that means in this day and age), there are several disparate categories of posts here. I’ll explain each.
Although there are fewer of these than other types of posts here on Another Middle, I consider these the primary focus of this blog (I have a number of ideas on deck for Perspectives posts, but they’ll take time to compose and publish). These are the content pieces that I put the most thought and effort into, and where I delve the deepest into the world of ideas, and my own mind.
They are where I bare my soul, and put my thoughts, feelings, intuitions, ideas, connections, experiences, hypotheses, and observations out into the universe, to be shared, applauded, argued, agreed, debunked, debated, and dissected by anyone and everyone. Because I’m a masochist, I suppose.
But also because I feel strongly that the world needs more profound, reasoned, and expansive thoughts out there, to begin to balance the scales against the neverending tide of inanity, banality, triviality, stupidity, ignorance, negativity, and narrowness that constantly clouds Society’s discourse. Though, there is nothing wrong with fart jokes, either.
So I do hope that you, dear electronic passer-by, are able to take the time to read and react to some of what I have to say, and perhaps even share, comment, or connect with me.
These posts began as emails to a small group of family and friends way back in my early college years, and which contained an assortment of articles, studies, and websites that piqued my interest. I’ve been a voracious consumer of internet content for over a decade now, from RSS feeds of EurekAlert, Science Daily, Science News, Futurity, Slashdot, Global Security, and Language Log, to news aggregator sites like Fark and Reddit, among many others. Especially before the Facebook Newsfeed became a ripe ground for sharing such things, emails with links and brief commentary seemed like the best way to spread information.
I have re-posted updated and edited versions of some of my old Articles of the Moment emails here (backdated appropriately), and will continue to fill in old posts over time. I also intend to make new “AotM” posts going forward as well, because there are even more fascinating and potentially life-changing ideas being created than ever before, and despite increased social-media-based news-sharing by everyone these days, most people only encounter a small fraction of them.
We’ll see though. There is a reason I called them Articles of the “Moment”—there’s no way I’d commit to a regular schedule of posting. Real Life keeps getting in the way.
Travel
There are no such posts yet, but I do plan on gradually posting bits and pieces of a travelogue I’ve been writing on and off for well over a decade now. These posts will chronicle my adventures during a Gap Year in 2000 and 2001, and will serve as teasers for a book I hope to publish.
Most “Personal” posts are from my college days, and are leftovers ported from a defunct Blogspot page that was somewhat active from 2004 to 2008. They are largely unchanged (merely minimally edited for grammar and flow), but I don’t necessarily have all of the same opinions or beliefs shared in them. It certainly is fascinating reading one’s own writings after many years of intervening growth.
Otherwise, any more recent Personal posts will likely deal with my day-to-day meanderings, travel anecdotes, work experiences, or my family or friends, among other general topics.
These are pretty self-explanatory, and are bits that every self-respecting “blogger” can’t avoid writing for very long. After all, food and opinions (and opinions about food) are second only to porn in driving web traffic around the world, right?
I don’t post many recipes unless I am supremely impressed with them, or they’re something I have been making myself for a while, since the web is already inundated with amazing food ideas merely a search away.
It’s a similar story with book or movie reviews—I’d sooner leave an Amazon review than post something here, unless the book or movie is exceptionally horrendous or amazing.
History
This forum for sharing the cacophony of ideas that pop into my head had its roots back in 1998, when I started a Geocities page that I had grandiosely and naively intended to become something like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Too bad I wasn’t remotely technically skilled, well-connected, or motivated enough, or I might have beaten Jimmy Wales to the punch by a few years. Ha! As if. (The only “interesting” thing I really did on that old Geocities site was compiling some comprehensive, alphabetized lists—all the named stars in the sky by constellation, all musical instruments in the world by category, and all the domesticated fruits of the world by climate. In retrospect, those were fairly obsessive and niche things to do, and probably representative of the single-minded, compulsive list-making that still dominates on Wikipedia and the Web in general today).
During the first half of college, I abandoned the Geocities page and bought my first domain, growing an actual personal website as I taught myself web design. There was a fair amount of interest-related content back then, including a large number of pictures and descriptions of my Gap Year travels, all hosted on the 20Mb of “free” webspace that Penn provided to students. Throughout the rest of my collegiate career I added a (since-deleted) Blogspot blog (which is where the Articles of the Moment originated), and gradually refined the design and coding of the site, eventually moving to my own rented webspace.
It was in 2011 when I began taking seriously suggestions from those around me to become a life coach. So I began to half-heartedly refocus my websites toward that goal, and away from purely personal content. But it still took another 3 years of life and work experiences to bring me to today, and to Alex Lorenc Life Coaching and AnotherMiddle.
Conclusion
If you’ve read this far, then you clearly need a hobby, but nevertheless thank you for your attention and readership, and stay tuned for much more to come in the future!
