I had really expected that I will get better with age. I am really not. I am not gaining more patience, more kindness, more generosity, more compassion. I am better read, more travelled, world weary and oh so, so so so vain. Vanity, thou art what drives me now. Seriously, aging is over rated. Stay young people.

Writing, oftentimes, is a tortured process. Best of the writing is usually done when it is done undemanded. Expectations, of a certain style, content, deadlines etc generally ruin it.

There are times, so many, too many to count, when I come across a piece written so beautifully, expressed so efficiently that I question the need for my idiotic work.

To that end , here is something called “I believe” from Mencken –
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms.
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

From Lord Byron –

if a writer should be quite consistent,
How could he possibly show things existent?

Society is now one polish’d horde,
Form’d of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.

Specially when it does not exist. I never realized how time consuming and how really hard it would be to design a viable, believable interstellar spaceship.