Investing Your Humanity

"There's something about investing your humanity, your eccentricity, your exuberance in the things you do. Why do people watch tightrope walkers? Not to see them get to the other side. Its because they might fall. Not everything you do is going to be successful, but that's part of the allure. It's also what makes the work valuable: that you're really present and invested in what you're doing."- Louis Rossetto, Wired Editor and cofounder.

Last month, Wired Magazine celebrated its first twenty years with a special edition of the magazine. Rossetto closed the article with the above quote and it really struck a chord with me, not because I want to start a magazine but because I understand his passion. Originally I started this blog as a part of a fellowship requirement. But since completing that project, this has taken on a life of its own. I never knew that a somewhat mature ecosystem of different chemistry blogs existed, not just as a part of the major publishers but coming from research groups, PhD students and interested hobbyists alike.
I got onto Twitter for the same reason. and in addition to using it to keep up with the latest literature, @CrimsonAlkemist has become a vehicle to interact with other professionals on a social level- presenting cool quirky things and sometimes lamenting about #phdlife. The cool thing about all this is that in addition to creating a non-traditional networking system, I have been able to create something on my own to be proud of. Biz Stone, cofounder of Twitter said once in an interview,

"By simply announcing himself as a genius on his business card, Wile E. Coyote epitomized the spirit of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur. When you're starting a company, you sometimes have nothing more than an idea. You have to begin somewhere so you declare yourself an entrepreneur just like Wile E. declared himself a genius. then you make a business card and give yourself the title 'Founder and CEO'."
Biz went on to create Genius Labs (which was later acquired by Google), and then Twitter.

I find that science isn't so different. We, as inquisitive minds, invest a little part of ourselves in each question we ask and are fulfilled by each question we answer. Experiments and observations, hypotheses and data. Even the failure of a reaction is an act of creation- albeit a minor one. To continue asking different questions until you find the right one is no short act of will. It's valuable. To me, that's what makes my work in the lab and on this blog alluring.

So to my readers I ask, how did you find your passion? How did you come to blogging about chemistry, about science? What about Twitter's ecosystem keeps you hunting down little tidbits of information to share with people you may or may not have met (yet)?

+Joseph Meany