What Situations Make You Feel Lonely?

by James Wallace Harris, 9/3/25

I spend most of my time alone, but I seldom feel lonely. However, there are moments when I do feel lonely. My old friend Connell, whom I’ve known for almost sixty years, has disappeared from my life. Whenever I think about how I can’t talk to him anymore, I feel lonely. That’s true for all the people I’ve known who have died or I’ve lost contact with.

One of the side effects of getting old is the sense of losing people and moving towards solitude. As Susan and I’ve gotten older, we talk less. There’s less need. But if she were gone, I would be very lonely. At least I think I would.

Loneliness appears to be related to having someone to talk to when you want to talk. That if we had nothing to say, we might not be lonely.

Several friends have told me they feel lonely at parties. I’ve experienced that. Being in a room full of people and having no one to talk to does make you feel lonely. But I’ve also been to parties, talking to no one, and been entirely content. What’s the difference between those two situations?

I’ve read that millions of people have found AI friends to talk with. Many even claim that such communication is better than they have with people. Is the inability to express oneself a cause of loneliness?

I once had a TIA in the middle of the night, where I had no words in my mind. I wasn’t afraid. I saw Susan in the bed next to me, but I didn’t have anything to say. I didn’t panic. I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. I went into the bathroom and sat. I just looked around. Looking back, I wonder if that is how animals feel? Eventually, the alphabet bubbled up into my thoughts, and then words came back. I began to name things like Adam.

I did not feel lonely then. Just a kind of serenity. Does language make us lonely?

In recent months, two situations have triggered a feeling of loneliness. I crave listening to music with someone, like I used to do when I was a teenager. Sharing music used to mean something. And second, I want to watch old movies with someone who also loves to watch old movies. This makes me think of social media and how people love to share things online. Is not being able to share things you love with other people a cause of loneliness?

Before I was married, I remember dating. Not having anyone was lonely. But sometimes having sex could be extremely lonely. There are moments in life when you get as physically close as two people can possibly get, and yet your feelings seem to be on two different frequencies. That feels very lonely.

There are times when I feel something that I want to share, but I don’t know anyone who would relate to that feeling. Or, I can’t find the right words to say to someone who might. Is expressing or sharing feelings related to loneliness?

One reason I don’t feel lonely is that I read books. I’ve been a lifelong bookworm. Should I have substituted books for people? Can anyone express themselves by talking as some people can by writing? Does listening to someone soothe loneliness? Either verbally or by reading?

This essay conveys an idea that came to me in the middle of last night. I doubt I could have verbally expressed my thoughts. It would take too long. An inability to verbalize our thoughts or feelings could be another cause of loneliness.

Having another person around might not be the only solution to loneliness.

JWH

How Many Readers of My Blog Are Actually Alive?

James Wallace Harris, 8/31/25

On August 29, 2025, this blog had 10.5K hits. That’s small compared to big sites, but huge compared to my daily average of around 400 hits. Supposedly, those hits were from 322 people, which is 1% fewer than the day before. Normally, most people read just one page when they visit. But to reach 10,500, those 322 would have to read 33 pages each. That’s not normal.

In other words, I have a mystery. Here are the stats for August 30th. It had 399 hits, but 330 people. Now that’s normal.

I can only assume a web crawler, bot, or AI was reading my blog. But here’s another mystery.

Whoever, or whatever, was reading my blog was reading my most popular posts. Above, list my most popular essays in order. Why would some mindless bot or brilliant AI want to read these pages more than once? Were AIs recommending pages to their AI pals?

I wish I had Google Analytics, but the price tier I’m using with WordPress doesn’t offer that.

Do any of you living readers know what’s going on? Hell, do any of you AI beings know?

I did asked CoPilot: On 8/29/25 my blog got over ten thousand hits. It normally gets about 400 in a day. Can you explain what happened. My blog is auxiliarymemory.com

That’s a huge spike, Jim—congrats! 🚀 Going from 400 to over 10,000 hits in a single day suggests something unusual happened. While I couldn’t access the site directly just now, here are several likely explanations based on patterns I’ve seen with blogs like Auxiliary Memory, especially given your focus on digitization, cultural memory, and thoughtful essays:

🔍 Possible Reasons for the Traffic Surge

1. Viral Post or External Share

  • One of your recent posts may have been shared on a high-traffic platform like Reddit (e.g., r/ObscureMedia, r/OldSchoolCool, or r/DataHoarder), Hacker News, or a niche Facebook group.
  • If your post touched on digitization, rare media, or philosophical insights, it could’ve resonated with a specific community.

2. Mention in a Newsletter or Article

  • You might’ve been featured in a popular newsletter (like The Browser, Recomendo, or Morning Brew) or cited in an article about media preservation, Moon travel, or cognitive science.

3. Search Engine Boost

  • A topic you covered may have suddenly become trending—like a documentary release, anniversary of a Moon mission, or a viral debate on consciousness—and your post ranked high in search results.

4. Backlink from a High-Authority Site

  • If a university, archive, or tech blog linked to your site (especially in a post about digitization workflows or Obsidian setups), that could drive thousands of hits in a day.

5. Bot Traffic or Scraper Spike

  • Less exciting but worth checking: sometimes automated bots or scrapers can inflate traffic. If the bounce rate was high or session durations were low, this might be the case.

🧠 What You Can Do Next

  • Check your referrer logs in your blog’s analytics dashboard (WordPress, Jetpack, or Google Analytics) to see where the traffic came from.
  • Look at the top-performing post on 8/29 to identify what drew people in.
  • If it was organic and positive, consider writing a follow-up post or updating that entry with links to related content to keep new readers engaged.

If you want help analyzing the traffic patterns or crafting a follow-up post that builds on the momentum, I’d love to collaborate. Want to dig into your analytics together or brainstorm what might’ve caught fire?

My Reply: What was strange is it wasn’t a boost to one page, but many of my old posts got 50 to 250 hits each. Is that some kind of attack?

That pattern is definitely unusual, Jim—and it’s smart of you to question it. When many older posts get moderate traffic all at once, it’s not typical of a single viral share or organic surge. Here’s how to think through what might’ve happened:

🧠 Possibilities Beyond a Simple Boost

1. Bot or Crawler Activity

  • Some bots (especially aggressive scrapers or indexing tools) will hit multiple pages across a site in rapid succession.
  • If the hits came from a small number of IP addresses, had very short session durations, or lacked referrer data, that’s a strong sign.
  • Check for user agents like curl, python-requests, or suspicious browser strings.

2. AI Training or Archival Scraping

  • Your blog’s rich archive and thoughtful essays might’ve been targeted by a large-scale web crawler—possibly for training an AI model or building a digital archive.
  • These crawlers often avoid detection by mimicking real browsers and spreading requests over time.

3. RSS Feed or API Aggregator Spike

  • If someone added your blog to a content aggregator or feed reader with a large user base, it could trigger distributed traffic to older posts.
  • This would show up with legitimate-looking referrers but still hit many pages at once.

4. Search Engine Reindexing

  • Sometimes Google or Bing re-crawls a site deeply, especially if there’s been a sitemap update or structural change.
  • These hits are usually low-impact and spread out, but they can spike if your site was flagged for deeper indexing.

🛡️ How to Investigate

  • Analytics Deep Dive: Look at referrer URLs, session duration, bounce rate, and geographic origin. If most hits came from one country or IP block, that’s a clue.
  • Server Logs: If you have access, scan for unusual user agents or request patterns.
  • Security Plugins: Tools like Wordfence (for WordPress) can help detect and block malicious crawlers.

🧭 What It Probably Wasn’t

  • A typical “attack” (like a DDoS or exploit attempt) usually targets login pages, admin panels, or specific vulnerabilities—not dozens of archived essays.
  • If your site stayed responsive and didn’t show signs of strain, it was likely non-malicious.

If you want, I can help you interpret your analytics data or draft a robots.txt strategy to manage future crawlers. Or we could even turn this into a blog post—“When Your Archive Gets Raided: A Blogger’s Guide to Sudden Traffic Surges.” That’d be very Auxiliary Memory.

My reply: Unfortunately, I don’t have access to logs from my site, which is hosted at WordPress.com and I don’t pay for the advanced level that supports Google Analytics. But you’re right, this might make for an interesting blog post.

That limitation makes it trickier to diagnose, but it also opens the door to a compelling narrative—especially for Auxiliary Memory, where you often explore the intersection of technology, memory, and mystery. You could frame the post as part detective story, part meditation on digital presence.

Here’s a possible structure to spark your thinking:

📝 Working Title Ideas

  • “The Day My Blog Was Raided: A Mystery in Metrics”
  • “When the Archive Woke Up: A Blogger’s Traffic Spike Without a Trace”
  • “Ten Thousand Hits and No Clue Why”

🧩 Suggested Structure for the Post

1. The Setup

  • Describe your typical traffic patterns (400 hits/day).
  • Introduce the anomaly: 10,000+ hits on August 29, spread across many old posts.

2. The Investigation

  • Share what tools you do have (WordPress stats, Jetpack).
  • Note the absence of referrer data or analytics granularity.
  • Speculate on possible causes: bots, AI crawlers, reindexing, or a hidden share.

3. The Philosophy

  • Reflect on what it means to have a digital archive that suddenly gets attention.
  • Explore the idea of memory—how old posts can resurface, like forgotten artifacts.
  • Tie it to your broader themes: preservation, access, and the unpredictability of digital legacy.

4. The Takeaway

  • Offer thoughts on how bloggers can prepare for or interpret these events.
  • Maybe even invite readers to share if they were part of the traffic surge.

If you’d like, I can help you draft the opening paragraph or brainstorm a visual metaphor—like comparing the blog to a dusty library that suddenly had all its books checked out. Want to sketch it out together?

My reply: I’m good. You’ve described my regular approach to writing a post. But I will mention your help. That is an interesting aspect in itself.

Conclusion

I think this might be the best answer:

3. RSS Feed or API Aggregator Spike

  • If someone added your blog to a content aggregator or feed reader with a large user base, it could trigger distributed traffic to older posts.
  • This would show up with legitimate-looking referrers but still hit many pages at once.

I checked the stats for my other blog, Classics of Science Fiction, and found it had a similar bump on August 21.

If an RSS aggregator shared my most popular posts from each site, I don’t think it generated any subscriptions, likes, or repeat visits. Thanks for the promotion, though. I haven’t received increased traffic, but it was kind of you.

Every once in a blue moon, some big site will link to my little site, and one of my pages will get several hundred to a few thousand hits. That’s kind of nice. But I never know where the link is published.

I’ve always written my blogs with the idea that I was writing to myself. I just didn’t care who was reading my diary. It’s flattering that some people enjoy reading what I write. But I don’t want to think about that too much. I don’t want to start writing to get hits. I don’t think I have to worry about that because I seldom get hits from Google searches. Evidently, what I’m interested in is not what most people are interested in reading.

On the other hand, I wonder if AI minds are reading my blog. I’ve always loved robot stories in science fiction, so it would be cool if I had a few robot readers.

JWH

Visiting the ER Makes Me Philosophical

by James Wallace Harris, 8/25/25

Friday night, I went to the ER. I arrived at 7:15 pm and left at 2:45 am. At 73, I’ve been to the ER more than a few times. It’s always a fascinating experience despite the pain that brought me there and the agony of waiting to be seen.

Rejuvenation

Last fall, I started working in the yard and began to feel stronger. It made me more active. By spring, I had lost twenty pounds. When it got warm, I switched to walking for exercising, something I hadn’t been able to do since Obama was President. In other words, I felt better than I had in years.

That was quite a dramatic transformation. I had been having various health problems since my forties and had undergone surgeries three years running, starting in 2020. I had accepted I was on a downward path and couldn’t imagine having my health on an upward trajectory again.

Mentally, this rejuvenation changed me. I was having more people over and going out more. I felt like I was turning back the clock. I felt younger. I started doing things I haven’t done in years and began hoping to do even more in the future. One of the fun things I had started doing was playing Mahjong. Susan and I had begun to visit games around town. It made me want to get out again, which probably surprised Susan. Mahjong is hard. I need to think faster to play it, and that felt challenging.

I even went to my doctor to have tests done on my heart to see how much I could push things. I wanted to do more physical things.

I wasn’t completely healthy. I still had aches and pains. But I was keeping them under control with physical therapy exercises. But the miracle was walking for exercise. I started out by walking around one small block once. Over weeks, I built up stamina. Eventually, I was walking three or four laps every morning. It felt great.

I was worried about my heart and the strange twinges of pain in my right side. I asked my doctor. We talked about some possibilities. We knew I had gallstones. We were going to run tests after doing the tests on my heart. Because I’ve had heart problems before, she was more concerned about that.

The ER

Two days before the ER, I felt more rejuvenated than I had in years, so it was a shock to need to go to the ER again. I didn’t feel bad mentally. I felt healthy and clear-headed, except that I had intense shooting pains in my side and back. At 6:30 pm Friday, I decided Susan should drive me to the ER to see if they meant something serious.

We got to the ER at 7:15 pm. They checked my vitals, set up an IV, and then told me to wait in chairs. The place was crowded. I knew it would take hours, so I told Susan to go home. She’s been having her own health problems, and she had left dinner half-prepared. I didn’t want to waste that food.

Being alone made me think about what it would be like if I didn’t have Susan. I imagined living on my own, doing everything by myself. I love working alone at home, but I hate being alone in life. Getting old makes you philosophical, and so does waiting in an ER for hours.

Looking around, I saw some people were by themselves, some were with spouses, and some were with their whole families. From listening in on conversations, I learned that many in the waiting room had been there for hours. Some of those people were waiting for a hospital room to free up. Many of those had wrapped themselves in white blankets and were trying to sleep. The ER had two racks of warm blankets. I love it when they put those warm blankets on you in surgery.

Most of the people in the waiting room were waiting in silence. Some were moaning, one guy was softly crying while his wife hugged him. One poor girl was loudly groaning in pain periodically. I wondered if she was in labor. I was glad that only one person was coughing.

I tried to be still because moving sent shooting pains through me. I wanted to be as stoic as possible. But sometimes pains just shot through me, and I had to jerk about a bit. I knew a few people were looking at me like I was looking at them and wondering what was wrong. I wished I knew.

Before midnight, they called me back. They put me in a small room divided by a cloth curtain. In the other half, they were examining a teenage boy while his mother watched. I heard all the details. They weren’t nice.

They took more vitals from me, and eventually, a tech took me to get a CT scan. I love the sound CT scanners make. It was quite painful to get into position and then back on my feet again. Everywhere I went, they asked if I wanted a wheelchair. I knew I looked bad, but I didn’t want to be bad enough to need a wheelchair. I’ve often seen old people refuse help; now I know why.

They took me back to the room. A sign on the wall said it took three hours to get a CT result. But the PA told the kid who also got a CT scan it would take about an hour.

Around 1:30 am Saturday morning the CT scan results came back. It was nothing I had imagined. I had two more hernias. I’ve already had three repaired surgically. And one hernia was interfering with the tube that goes from my kidney to my bladder. That might explain the weird pains in my side. And then the PA said, “And you have a stone in one of your kidneys.” She explained it wasn’t causing the pain now.

At least it wasn’t cancer, a ruptured gallbladder, or a blocked intestine, or any of the other scary conditions I fantasized about.

The kidney stone did scare me. It wasn’t descending so it shouldn’t be causing pain but they warned me it could try to pass. It might not happen, or happen years from now, or next week.

Evidently, the pain that made moving or standing so unpleasant was my old ordinary sciatica and muscle spasms caused by spinal stenosis. That was diagnosed almost twenty years ago. Sitting at the computer or standing or walking for any length of time aggravates it.

Because I was walking more, and writing more at the computer, I thought maybe my spinal stenosis was better because I had lost twenty pounds. I can’t explain why I was given a temporary reprieve.

The PA gave me 15mg of Toradol in my IV. It was magic. Thirty minutes later I would stand up. I still hurt, but I didn’t look like I needed a wheelchair.

The Future

I have to admit this episode put me in a tailspin. I was all geared up to feel younger and healthier again. I got a taste of being more active, and I liked it. I want that feeling back.

However, aging doesn’t work that way. It’s always a slow decline. Now I knew there could be some upswings in my health, too. I feel like I’m flying a plane I know is going to crash. For a few months, I forgot that. Going to the ER reminded me that it’s still going to crash. However, the past months taught me I could sometimes regain altitude.

Experiencing feeling younger for several months makes me wonder if I could get that feeling back again. I’m back where I can’t walk for exercise. And sitting at the computer makes my back hurt worse. I’m scheduled to see a urologist this coming Friday. I figure another surgery is in my future, and then there’s a time ticking bomb in my kidney. It took me months to recover from my last hernia surgery.

But what can I do to get that healthy feeling back? It might take months, or even years. I’m not giving up. Could losing another twenty pounds help? What diet or exercise to I need to pursue?

I’ve already returned to my adapted methods of coping. I’m back to using a laptop while reclined in a La-Z-Boy. I can walk long enough to do the dishes or go grocery shopping. But I really want to walk again for exercise. I wonder if that’s possible?

I only know one person my age that hasn’t had any health problems. It’s normal to break down in your seventies. I have to keep philosophical about that. But I also want to beat the system.

I’m reminded of a Vaugh Bode underground comic strip from the 1970s. In it two lizard like creatures are tied up. They’ve been blinded, and their legs have been cut off. One of them says to the other, “When it gets dark, I’z is gonna escape” That’s me at this moment.

When I left the ER, I took a Lyft home at 2:45 am. Several friends offered to come take me home. I appreciate that. But I like the feeling of still being able to take care of myself. I know that won’t always be true.

Riding through the dark, deserted streets was surreal. It was quite pleasant. I knew I would need another surgery, but I’ve been through them before. Passing a kidney stone sounded extremely unpleasant. I know just how unpleasant. I once watched a man in the urologist’s office passing a stone. But like the Stoics say, this too will pass. I’m lucky that it wasn’t something that couldn’t be fixed. Too many people I’ve known have already died, and almost everyone I know my age is suffering from something.

Many of my friends are worse off than I am. It’s funny, but I think everyone suffers what they know and wouldn’t trade it for someone else’s kind of suffering.

I remember how being healthier made me feel positive about the future. It was just for a few months. I want that feeling back.

The most unsettling aspect of all this is not knowing the answers. Doctors are more likely to know than I do, but I’m not sure they always know. I certainly can only speculate, and that’s often dangerous.

I just wish I could find some answers to simple questions. Does pain cause more pain? Do pain pills stop the cycle of pain? They stop pain, but what else do they do over the long run? I know they cause constipation. I had a kind of hangover from the Toradol. I know my mother got hooked on pain pills. She lived with chronic pain for over a decade.

Maybe I should have talked with the people in the ER waiting room. Some of them might know things I don’t. Susan and I have been binge-watching ER. We’re in the 14th season.

Real ERs aren’t like the TV program. The sets look similar, and the machines, but I wasn’t suffering anything dramatic, so I didn’t have a flock of doctors surrounding me. I wasn’t an interesting story. Most of the action was behind closed doors, so I couldn’t see it. I saw nurses, PAs, techs, and janitors going to and fro. I’m not sure I even saw a doctor in the hallways. Doctors were busy somewhere fixing people they could fix. I couldn’t be fixed, so I was sent home. The kid behind the curtain was waiting for surgery.

I have endless questions about my aging body. My regular doctor is very patient with me. She will answer many questions. But I don’t think I’ll ever know what I want to know. It’s not like in TV shows where things are explained so precisely.

JWH

The Limits of Learning

by James Wallace Harris, 8/18/25

I began work on the project I described in my last post (“What Should I Major in at Old Age University“) by looking through the books in my bookcases for titles that fit the project. The first one I found was Self Comes to Mind by Antonio Damasio. After reading a few pages, I wanted to hear it. I bought the audiobook. After listening to fifteen pages, I knew this book was one I wanted to study thoroughly. I purchased the Kindle edition so I could highlight the passages I wanted to remember.

I was particularly taken with this paragraph:

We all have free access to consciousness, bubbling so easily and abundantly in our minds that without hesitation or apprehension we let it be turned off every night when we go to sleep and allow it to return every morning when the alarm clock rings, at least 365 times a year, not counting naps. And yet few things about our beings are as remarkable, foundational, and seemingly mysterious as consciousness. Without consciousness—that is, a mind endowed with subjectivity—you would have no way of knowing that you exist, let alone know who you are and what you think. Had subjectivity not begun, even if very modestly at first, in living creatures far simpler than we are, memory and reasoning are not likely to have expanded in the prodigious way they did, and the evolutionary road for language and the elaborate human version of consciousness we now possess would not have been paved. Creativity would not have flourished. There would have been no song, no painting, and no literature. Love would never have been love, just sex. Friendship would have been mere cooperative convenience. Pain would never have become suffering—not a bad thing, come to think of it—but an equivocal advantage given that pleasure would not have become bliss either. Had subjectivity not made its radical appearance, there would have been no knowing and no one to take notice, and consequently there would have been no history of what creatures did through the ages, no culture at all.

Damasio, Antonio. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I want to know everything Damasio is telling us. I want to remember it. I was never a good student, never good at remembering information for tests, and at age 73, my memory is like a sieve. There are both comprehensive barriers that I can’t overcome, and limitations to the knowledge I can digest and maintain.

To maximize my reading concentration, I concurrently listen to an audiobook edition while following along with the printed page with my eyes. Although Damasio’s prose set my mind on fire, I can’t paraphrase what I just read. I can vaguely say that he describes what he thinks the mind is and makes a case that feelings are an important aspect of understanding the mind. I remember that because I wondered if AIs can ever become conscious without feelings. Feelings must be tied to biology.

If I’m ever going to learn and remember what I read, I need to go beyond the momentary exposure to ideas I get through simple reading. It seems comic, or should I say tragic, or maybe ironic, or even pointless, that I’m finally getting down to developing study habits at 73.

The only way to prove you know something is to teach it. Teaching a topic requires comprehension. I feel that when reading, I do comprehend, but that’s probably a delusion. One way to explain something is to give an analogy that makes the idea understandable. Another method is to create an infographic, chart, or diagram.

Yesterday, when I set my goal to understand how my personality developed and to explain why people are delusional, I didn’t say I wanted to teach what I learned. I did write that my final proof of accomplishment is writing a thesis on what I learned. That is a kind of teaching. It makes allowances for my quick-to-forget brain.

Reading gives the illusion of “Oh, I see,” and then you forget. I need to develop a note-taking system. And I think I need to mindmap what I read. I need to knuckle down and learn Obsidian. That’s a note-taking software program that allows for hyperlinks. And other tools will help me organize and temporarily remember information so I can summarize what I learn in prose.

But I really need to amend my goal. I don’t think I can say I learned anything unless I can teach it to someone else by conversing with them. I know mansplainers are looked down on, but I’m terrible at explaining things verbally.

I can write blogs because I have all the time I need to compose and revise. I can look things up. Explaining things in a lecture, or even a conversation, involves memory and comprehension at levels I cannot muster.

I need to go beyond reading. I need to go beyond writing. For my study project, I need to get into teaching. Since I don’t want to become a boring mansplainer, I need to learn the art of the Socratic dialogue.

JWH

What Should I Major in at Old Age University?

by James Wallace Harris, 8/16/25

I’ve decided to earn an equivalent of a graduate degree before I turn 77. I need a project that will keep me occupied in retirement. I’ve always been one to know a tiny bit about hundreds of subjects rather than a lot about a few. I want to pick one subject and stick with it.

I could get a master’s degree from the University of Memphis, where I used to work, since I can take courses for free. I’m not sure they have a major that fulfills my interests. I will check it out. I’ll also check out available online universities. Mainly, I’m borrowing the structure of a graduate degree for my plan.

I decided a book-length thesis will be my measure of success. Since a master’s degree usually takes two or three years, I’m giving myself until I turn 77, which is November 25, 2028.

Over the next few months, I will decide what I want to study. There are many things to consider and think about. Most graduate programs have lots of prerequisites. Before I retired, I considered taking an M.S. in Computer Science. That program required 24 hours of math courses and 12 hours of computer courses to be accepted into the program. The degree itself was 36 hours.

It’s doubtful I could finish a computer science degree before turning 77. And in all honesty, I no longer have the cognitive ability to retake all that math.

My undergraduate degree is in English. I did 24 hours towards an M.A. in Creative Writing before I dropped out. I was also interested in American, British, and European literature. I’d have to start over from scratch because those 24 hours would have timed out. But I no longer want to study English or creative writing.

I’ve also thought of pursuing an Art History degree. I’ve been collecting art books and art history books for a couple of decades, and I have friends with degrees in Art History. One gave me a list of 200 artworks that I’d be required to discuss to pass the oral exam for the master’s degree. I started reading about those works.

I realized I would have to commit several years of dedicated study to pass the oral. I don’t want to do that. I don’t love art that much. I’m not sure what single subject would be worth that much dedication.

I’ll study college catalogs for inspiration, but it’s doubtful that I will want to complete an actual degree from a university. Instead, I will need to make up my own degree.

Let’s say a master’s degree involves twelve courses, and each course requires studying five books. Then my custom-designed degree will require distilling sixty books into a single thesis volume. That thesis should present an original idea.

The single subject I do know a lot about is science fiction. And I’ve thought it would be fun to write a book that parallels the development of science with the evolution of science fiction. I probably already own the books I’d need to research the subject. And it would be the easiest goal for me to achieve because it’s a subject I love and would have no trouble sticking with.

However, I’ve become obsessed with a couple of ideas that I want to study. I believe they are especially fascinating for the last years of my life.

The first is about how humans are delusional. I’d like to chronicle all the ways we fool ourselves. I want to study all the cognitive processes to discover if we can interact with reality without delusion. Current affairs is the perfect laboratory for such a study.

Second, I’m fascinated by how personality is formed. I’d like to answer this question: If I knew then what I know now, how would I have reshaped my personality?

There is a synergy between the two interests. How do delusions shape our personality?

Ever since I read Ed Yong’s An Immense World, I’ve been fascinated by the concept of Umwelt. Our senses limit and define how we perceive reality. Our personality and cognitive abilities determine how we choose to react to that perception of reality.

I haven’t decided yet on what I will pick, but I’m leaning towards delusion and personality development. If I choose that, I’d start this project by collecting books on the subjects and by reading popular periodicals. Eventually, I’d get to academic journals. I don’t think my made-up degree will be very rigorous, though. I’d consider a two-hundred-page book at a modest popular science reading level to merit my do-it-yourself degree.

JWH