Writing about not writing

Well, I stayed up late hoping that I'd think of something to blog about, and no dice. This was probably a bad call. My current criteria, which may be too strict:

• Not work: I started blogging at all because I found myself only talking about work, and was afraid I was getting boring.
• Don't use willpower: nothing that I feel like I'm forcing myself to write.
• Not always introspective: doing too much of this leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Strategies for coming up with posts in the future:

• Write about the first thing I can think of: in this case, I had another introspection topic that I could have written on, but I didn't feel like doing another introspective post right this minute.
• Write about work: I'd prefer to avoid this, but whatever I'd blog about would be different from my day-to-day work, and that might be nice.
• Write about something I thought about a while ago: I have a few technical topics lying around that I could convert into blog posts quickly. The main blocker is that that doesn't sound very fun; if I've already done the thinking, then I'm just left with the hard part of expressing it.
• Write about my past: for example, I used to be pretty into Buddhism; I could write about what that was like and what changed. Many other memoirish things could work.
• Journal: I could write about things I've done recently, or about how I think life is going. Not super-appealing, but maybe I could figure out what's fun about it. (I was really bad at journaling when I was a kid, and I'm probably not great now, never having done it.)
• Media reviews: books, movies, TV, etc.
• Micro-posts: collect a few topics where I only have a few sentences to say.

Activities that might help generate ideas I'm actually excited about:

• Watch TV or read a book.
• Read a technical paper or go down the rabbit hole on some topic of interest.
• Take a walk? (Feels un-promising, but based on experience this could work)
• Talk to K about something, then write it down.

Particular topics that might work for tomorrow, though they don't sound that appealing to me right now:

Work:

• Intelligence explosion
• A concrete setting for MIRI's Löb problem
• Different threads in AI safety
• EA and x-risk / AI safety

Philosophical / technical / "intellectual":

• Boltzmann brains
• Natural selection or abiogenesis in Conway's game of life
• Patient-centric ethics
• Some philosophy of mind prompt from Luke

Other:

• My recent vacation
• Consequentialist vs expressive modes of being
• Segments of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign
• Music I've liked recently