Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash

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One of my earliest memories of doing stuff with my mother is of a newspaper cutout, sheets of paper and her sitting beside me encouraging me to apply whatever iota of critical thinking I could summon to whatever was the task of the day, usually some Close Up essay competition or the other. I don’t recall us ever submitting any of those, the discipline of wrestling thoughts into semi-coherent arguments perhaps being the point of the entire exercise. That sense of writing as a vehicle for thinking aloud about a subject is one that has stayed with me over the years.

I would like to say that this search for (small t) truth at the nexus of a subject is what motivates me to write but that would be bending the truth somewhat. That is partly the truth of course, but it is the sense of being curator of my own little corner of the internet, and the probability – however increasingly minuscule in this world of SEO and algorithms – that makes me write publicly. I have known the delights of minds connecting over a turn of phrase deliciously delivered and also the angst from forlorn pages which have seemingly disappeared into the great void of the internet. Be that as it may, that is a drug, the lingering memories of a past hit drawing me to write again and again in hope.