Welcome!
Quick links:
My writing and newsletter: baxterwrites.com
My short-form ideas and thoughts: Twitter
Say hi by email: baxblackwood@icloud.com
Hey there!
I’m Baxter.
I’m a 21-year-old writer and researcher living in Austin, Texas.
Last year at an IHOP in Boulder, Colorado, I told my parents some scary news: I wanted to leave college.
Although I loved school and had a 4.0 in pre-med, I just had this gut feeling that I needed to do it. I was just starting out writing online, but I had this idea that the potential of the Internet was still largely untapped.
I was right (I think). As I write this, after writing online for almost two years, I’ve learned that I love the act of writing. I can see myself doing it forever.
In my time after college, I learned about writing by:
Taking David Perell’s Writing Course Write of Passage
Working as a research assistant to Paul Millerd, author of The Pathless Path
Writing almost every single day for at least 90 minutes
Editing over 100 essays for friends and mentors, one of whom is an editor for Eric Jorgenson, author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
What I Write About
In the past, I’ve written about a lot of different topics that relate to psychology and introspection.
Here are three essays that I’m most proud of (before I pivot, as you’ll see below):
Rebirth of Curiosity
But as I write this and think about my 20s, I’m facing a problem.
When I think about when I was most alive in my life, ironically, it was in college. It was when I was studying something deep. So while I have been reading and writing about the things I want to, I’m missing the domain-expertise-type depth from my life.
As a mentor made me realize, I haven’t been taking my curiosity as serious as I should. So as I look forward, I want to go truly balls deep on ideas, talking about things that nobody else is.
To do so, I’m on a quest to answer two questions by the end of 2024:
The Odyssey is 2,700 years young. It’s about as old as the Bible. It was around before people could write (things down). What did it say? What wisdom was in it?
How is media and TV changing human consciousness and the human experience?
My long term vision with writing and building an audience is to explore the laws of the physical and spiritual universe. The timeless truths of the world. In short projects of 1-3 months (or more), I want to create curiosity curriculums to study things like: biology, physics, math, music theory, mythology, literature, and history.
Then, in the written word, I’ll combine all these weird ideas in fun and unique ways. By working hard like this for the next 5-10 years, I think I’ll have a much better sense of what I want to work on for the rest of my life.
Baxter’s Blend: My New Newsletter
Although I’ll spend the rest of 2024 on these two topics, I’ll still be shipping something every week.
In the past, I’ve only written essays. But now, I’m realizing that I need to do a newsletter. I’m already strict with all of my inputs—even podcasts. As I’ve upgraded my taste, I have a library of tidbits just sitting there in my Evernote.
Books, essays, graphs, stories, jokes, and more.
So I thought, why not share these with you every week? Why not just share a preview of my essay and include these other things as well?
I think this will be more valuable for both of us.
In it I’ll share the coolest things I’m learning, doing, and thinking about each week. Note: I only consume stuff that I feel called to consume. This means that for most of the things I share, you won’t see them anywhere else on the Internet.
You can read edition #1 below:
A Little More About Me
When I’m not writing, reading, or thinking about ideas, I love walking around without my phone, meditating, playing the piano, practicing yoga, and listening to Beethoven’s Piano Concertos.
One final thing: to see what I’m doing now, check out my Now Page.
Talk soon,
Baxter
