100 Things I’ve Learned from Writing 100 Tales

Fourteen months ago, I started a blog called Tales of Many Things because I have never been particularly good at focusing on one project at a time.

Normal bloggers pick a lane.

Travel.
History.
Science.
Politics.
Food.
Technology.

I looked at that sensible approach and thought, “What if I wrote about search and rescue, the Oxford comma, quantum mechanics, Memorial Day, artificial intelligence, odd human behavior, family history and whatever strange fact annoyed me over breakfast?”

It seemed like a perfectly reasonable lack of editorial discipline.

One hundred articles later, I’ve discovered something unexpected.

There aren’t many things.

There are only a handful of stories that human beings keep telling themselves while wearing different costumes.

I thought today would be a good occasion to write about the “100 Things I’ve Learned from Writing 100 Tales”. What on Earth have I learned after spending 100 articles wandering through the strange corners of existence?

Then I remembered that I’m the kind of person who writes entire articles because an amusement park sign looked funny or phone manufacturers overpromise and underdeliver.

So here’s the abridged version. After bouncing from search and rescue missions to ancient history, corporate absurdities and punk rock lyrics, I sat down to count the pieces of wisdom I’ve picked up.

Not literally one hundred things. Maybe a dozen and a half. Things like:

• I’ve learned that people are more interesting than they realize, but less interesting than they think they are.
• History is under absolutely no obligation to make sense.
• Nature always gets the last word.
• Every family has at least one relative who, given the right circumstances, could accidentally start a cult.
• The shortest path between two ideas is usually an unnecessary, but entertaining tangent.
• Search and rescue teaches that preparation is a form of kindness. The map you packed might save someone else’s day, not just your own.
• Technology solves problems and immediately invents newer, fancier problems.
• Politics change. Human nature mostly updates its wardrobe.
• Every expert was once the person asking embarrassingly basic questions.
• The universe is far stranger than any conspiracy theory. The conspiracy theorists simply lack imagination.
• A sense of humor is survival equipment.
• Poetry is beautiful.
• And marmots absolutely know more than they’re telling us.

The funny thing is that these ideas keep showing up no matter what I write about. When I look back across all those seemingly unrelated posts, I stop seeing the individual topics and start seeing the recurring themes connecting them:

• A story about science becomes a story about curiosity.
• A story about history becomes a story about memory.
• A story about search and rescue becomes a story about responsibility.
• A story about language becomes a story about how difficult it is for one human being to explain anything to another.
• A story about artificial intelligence somehow becomes a story about what makes people unique.
• Even the holiday articles usually end up asking why we remember some things and forget others.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t changing subjects nearly as often as I thought I was.

The topics change. The questions don’t.

• I’ve discovered that curiosity beats certainty.
• Preparation beats panic.
• Kindness matters.
• History rhymes.
• Progress always sends a bill.
• People are simultaneously ridiculous and magnificent.
• The universe is vast, indifferent and occasionally hilarious.
• The best conversations start with the words, “I wonder…”

I’ve also discovered that writing a hundred articles doesn’t make anyone wise. It mostly gives you a larger collection of odd facts and a growing inability to let perfectly good rabbit holes go unexplored.

After a hundred tales, I’ve come to suspect that this blog was never really about science, history, language, search and rescue, holidays, politics, technology or the strange corners of human civilization.

It’s been about the same thing all along. It’s been about what it means to be human in a strange and wonderful universe. It asked the question about how people make sense of a complicated world.

Though I still maintain that the marmots are up to something.

Thank you for wandering through these tales with me.

Here’s to the next hundred questions.