I came here to post because of my one-a-day discipline, but behind that is the goal of expressing in language what would otherwise disappear when I do. I am under the impression that I have something to say and that there are people to say it to. This project is to find out if that's so, and if it is, to say what needs to be said.

But that underlying motivation gets lost in the moment when faced with a blank page like the goal of losing weight gets lost when faced with a chocolate eclair. It's not that it's forgotten as an idea. That's easy to conjure up. What gets lost is the drive to fulfill it. This is where the structure of the project comes in to keep things happening.

I'm laying this out here, not because it's a profound concept, but because I need to remind my structure-hating self of what this project is about.

When we think of ourselves (and by 'we' I mean 'me' but I believe this is true of many or most people) our underlying model is one where everything we know is available like a table with plates of food at an all-you-can-eat buffet. The reality is that our immediate consciousness is pretty tiny with almost everything other than the idea of the moment being background. That, too, is a model in which we conceive of the background as potential foreground with a shift in attention.

Even as I write this, trying to find metaphors and analogies, I know that this is all wrong, but my knowing doesn't manage to replace it with an improved version that feels right.

I don't even know if the "we" I'm invoking is just contemporary Westerners, or all civilized people, or anyone capable of thinking, or . . . And I seem to be stuck in thinking that way, like Kant's a prioris were meant to indicate apply to everyone. The word "lost" suggests something that could be found. We use language as a way to navigate through it all. This "we" which is, at a minimum, me and you, is expected to follow and agree.

I feel anxious that when I return to this it will be terribly unclear, to the point that I will barely remember what I meant to say.

That anxiety is prompting me to stop writing, but maybe I can make up with volume what I lack in coherence.

We see others as essentially like ourselves (I am just like you--which was a kind of joke--is essentially how we approach the world, with the concepts of culture and character and intelligence and education accounting for any differences) but is this an accurate description of who "we" are?