(Continued from the previous post)
I’m leaving behind my schoolmates and getting to the point, the real blog celebration.
When I was 59 I started blogging the day I realised that my brain functions were a bit declining, or so it seemed to me.
Having scarce stimuli is dangerous when you are in the ‘early autumn of your life’ – to use Delwyn’s romantic expression. My activity in the field of systems engineering was not motivating me any more – even though my job had allowed me to ride the wave of the computer revolution.
Looking for new stimuli in my old passions I then started Man of Roma.
My desire for rewiring my synapses together with my personal inclination have slanted my writings toward the thoughtful side. Man of Roma saw its birth as a research on big themes which might seem a bit ambitious at first, if the approach weren’t that of the man of the street, or, as Mario put it, that of a coffee talk with friends – though going somewhere I do hope, and not nowhere!
After 20 months and 100 posts I can say this ‘discipline’ has worked fine. My brain is working better, my memory has improved (although my absent-mindedness has increased.)
I can thus testify that two teachings of my mentor were very effective, among the rest.
Writing, he used to say, is a stern discipline tightly linked to thinking:
Writing, thinking, clarifying,
striving to sort out thoughts
in ways so “clear and ordinate”
and comprehensible.
This, many years ago, Magister counselled
for the good education of the mind.
Beloved Magister,
writer, philosopher, educator…
A second element I derived from Magister is the importance of discussion and feedback to reach a better knowledge (dialectics.) I’m happy that, despite the heaviness of some themes, conversations in my blog are often longer, more interesting and have more text than the post that had started them.
I had the great pleasure to write, joke, talk or seriously discuss with people so various – and here I thank my wonderful commenters, ALL of them! – whose incitement and contribution have really kept me going.
We will see in the next post a first selection of themes from Man of Roma, with links to special pages I’ll have just created to sort out things a bit.
See you soon then.
Man of Roma 