On Long Form Thinking

Writing long form. It's kind of like that. Kind of.

There is a great deal to be said for what writing long form articles does for the mind.

When you only make small movements, your muscles become shorter and tighter, but when we stretch and move, they become longer and more nimble. The mind is the same way. When you only make quick posts and short comments, your mind gets out of the practice of stretching for deeper logical reason. This gets one more into their own head and makes small challenges seem more tangled and complex.

The 28 articles in 28 days concept was almost more of a whim than anything else, but it seemed like the right thing to do, and it very much has been. The discipline of writing every day, or at least having an article for every day has forced me to think in a deeper and broader way than I had become accustomed to. Instead of just looking at the quick response or next comment, I thought beyond that to causes and causes of causes. Things that had been opaque became clear to me, and I was able to understand the underlying roots of things as I had not before.

It's easy not to notice when something is lost, such as the transition from long form social media of Live Journal to the short form of Facebook and the shorter form of Twitter, but when I take a step back and get back into some deeper writing, I find that the rust comes off the old gears, and the old brain starts working again.

I highly encourage it as an exercise. It takes a bit longer to craft an article than a status update, but it's worth it.