Fourteen-hundred musings (more or less) (#1400)

Topics/tags: Meta-musings, Data, Overly-linked, Unedited

Two weeks ago, I finished musing 1399. I thought that I’d quickly move on to musing 1400 [1]. However, life got in the way. Perhaps I’ll list all the reasons in one of my not-so-legendary [2] musings on overcommitment. In any case, I’m not at my fourteen-hundredth musing or, more accurately, my fourteen-hundredth posted musing. That is, I’ve written—or at least drafted—many more. I’m also counting the various rants as musings; sometimes it’s hard to distinguish the two.

When I hit a multiple of 100, I generally look back to see what I’ve mused about and what I’ve learned about writing, myself, or the world. That was easier in the days in which 100 musings generally represented about four months of work. Let’s see … Musing 1300 was way back in August 2024, when Michelle was still alive and still at home. Damn! So much has happened in my life since then.

As you might imagine, the first dozen or two musings in the 1300 range were primarily about my life without Michelle or were tributes to her. I’d say 20% or more of the remaining ones were about similar topics. People who read them say that I write well about grief. More accurately, they say that I write well. But I know they mean the former. I still believe that I’m a competent writer. What makes those musings compelling is that I’m willing to dump all my emotions onto the page (or the screen, as it were). At least I think that’s what makes them compelling. I may reflect about that more in the future.

So, what did I write about these past nineteen-or-so months? I’m sometimes too obsessed with data, so I quickly reviewed and categorized (or re-categorized) all of them. Here goes. The ones that appear to be rants have an asterisk.

• 28 (twenty-eight) on Michelle (also often about myself): 1303, 1304, 1305, 1307, 1308, 1309, 1311, 1313, 1315, 1316, 1319, 1334, 1346, 1350, 1356, 1361, 1364, 1366 , 1368, 1371, 1374, 1375, 1380, 1382, 1391, 1395, 1396, 1399
• 21 (twenty-one) on myself (often in relation to Michelle): 1306, 1312, 1314, 1317, 1318, 1323, 1324, 1328, 1330, 1338, 1340, 1341, 1342, 1344, 1345, 1352, 1353, 1354, 1378, 1379, 1389
• 19 (nineteen) on Grinnell and Grinnellians: 1301, 1320, 1325*, 1333, 1336* [3], 1337, 1339, 1343, 1347, 1349, 1363, 1368, 1377, 1385*, 1388, 1393*, 1394, 1397, 1398
• 10 (Ten) on teaching: 1321, 1326, 1329, 1331, 1355, 1360, 1362, 1384, 1386, 1387
• 6 (six) reviews (plus some more Grinnell-related reviews above): 1370, 1376, 1381, 1383, 1390, 1392
• 5 (five) on technology: 1302* [5], 1332*, 1348, 1351, 1373
• 4 (four) on academia: 1327, 1357, 1359, 1367
• 2 (two) on food and cooking: 1335, 1365
• 2 (two) meta-musings (musings on musing): 1322, 1400 [4]
• And 3 (three) on something else: 1310, 1358, 1372

Did I learn anything from the classification exercise? Remembering what I was writing about made me cry at times, particularly when I was looking at the early musings. It looks like I succeeded at an implicit goal of ranting less. I found one musing I deleted and another that seems unexpectedly empty. I saw that last year’s spring break went about as poorly as this year’s; perhaps that’s not unexpected. I learned that I’d already ranted about signs that have QR codes but no URLs, something that was on my list to rant about in the nexst few musings. As long as we’re on the subject of rants, I see that most of my rants are about Grinnell or technology. I suppose that’s appropriate. I also discovered that I tend to classify two different kinds of things as teaching. Some such musings are about general teaching issues, such as the use of flipped classrooms. Others focus on more personal teaching issues, such as thoughts on my next Tutorial or comments on my experience guest-teaching an algorithms course. Fewer musings than I expected were marked as unedited [6].

Unsurprisingly, I also found myself crying as I reviewed the early musings from right before and right after Michelle’s passing. That’s okay; crying is healthy.

I don’t recall doing such a classification in the past, so I can’t tell how different the distribution is than normal. Given that half of the topics are explicitly autobiographical or about Michelle, I expect that I’m writing much more about myself than normal. Perhaps I’m writing more explicitly about myself, since most of my musings clearly reflect my experiences or perspectives.

At some point in this cycle, I decided I should work on my skills at reviewing—or at least writing about—some of the media I consume, including movies, concerts, books, TV shows, and games. It looks like I wrote about nine reviews. I can’t say that I’ve consciously learned much. I suppose that I should think about the issue more carefully. I wonder if there’s a book or article on the art of reviewing. My quick Web search suggests that there are a wide variety of articles with that title. I’ll add read and summarize the articles to my too-long to-do list. I should note that some of those articles are about reviewing for conferences, which is much different than writing an academic review of a published book, let alone a popular review. Nonetheless, it’s worth considering variety of approaches.

I see that in my prior centennial musing, I reflected on why I keep musing. I don’t find myself asking that question as much these days. I muse about Michelle because it keeps me connected to her. I muse about other topics because I like writing and I like what I learn when I write. As I suggest in the prior paragraph, musing still provides an opportunity for me to attempt new modes of writing or to improve my writing.

I wish I had more time to muse and that I could return to daily musing. However, as they say, Life happens. Still, we’ll see if I can write the next hundred musings in less than eightteen or so months.

Fingers crossed!

Or maybe not; crossed fingers make it hard to type.

[1] That is, this one.

[2] And whiny.

[3] For some reason, that musing on unexpected effects is unexpectedly empty.

[4] This musing!

[5] Now deleted (at Michelle’s request, I believe).

[6] This one was!

Version 1.0 of 2026-04-04.