Hello, friends. Welcome to Transmissions from Somewhen. I’m excited to get into the middle of a blog, because it turns out the first post is stupidly difficult to compose. You should see the notebook page this was drafted on.

I think that may be a little disingenuous because that sentence itself was written in the draft.

(Also that one. But this parenthetical is a 100% for real heat of the moment edit. For real.) 

Something that prominently influences me, and a lot of people like me, is the sensation of having a foot planted on the megalith of history, a foot seeking purchase on the unformed terrain of the future, and your bulk suspended over the present with the mildly disquieting feeling that you don’t entirely belong here.

I’d guess this is true of most artsy, sciencey, generally wondery types, but I haven’t discussed it in depth with anyone. That’s why I’m starting this enterprise.

Not that I’m saying I won’t also post whatever old driftwood floats out of my noggin. I definitely will. But I wanted a proper theme, and this one is as close to the heart of all my curiosities, loves and interests as I could find. 

The first question that comes to my mind about feeling like you should be in another time is whether that’s due to the specific character of the era you happen to exist in, or whether you have a mind that just doesn’t feel comfortable in the present, whenever that happens to be. 

That is, if I, as an early 21st century person, feel an odd longing both for knights and castles and for spaceships and rayguns, is it because I should actually be in one of those eras? Or if I were riding with Henry VI in the Wars of the Roses, would I be daydreaming about walking the streets of a major North American city in 600 years? 

My inclination, based on human behavior in general, is that this sort of mind, and mindset, would feel out of place no matter where its dot on the timeline. In general, people over-estimate the uniqueness of their position in history, and they tend to see absolutes where there are relatives. Take for example how every older generation yells about how The Kids Are Bad Now, because of course We Were More [Moral/Hardworking/Smart/Etc], and if you point out that their elders grouched about them too and that they too shifted society and made the world their own, well, of course, It Was Different When We Did It.

(Morgan Freeman narrator meme: It was not different when they did it.)

Accounting for that general tendency, I’m going to err on the side of the relative and guess that if your mind wanders forward and backward and likes to linger there, that’s what it would do regardless of its starting point. 

Naturally there’s a ton of stuff to expound on here, but that’s what the whole rest o’ the blog is for. Later posts are going to get a lot more specific about historical events and depictions of the future and won’t just be me rambling about generalities. Remember kids, broad generalizations are always bad. ;)

Thanks for reading.