August

De-Sentimentalization (1)
De-Sentimentalization (2)

I still don't understand why it took me so much time and so many words to explain that seemingly simple concept. Maybe the words can explain the time—this is definitely the largest unified set of essays I've ever written—but what can explain the words? My only guess is that because de-sentimentalization is an activity of my own invention, I couldn't point to anything else and say hey, it's like this, I just had to explain it all from scratch.

I won't bore you with the complete history of subdivisions and false starts, but I will point out that although April 2007 is the first time I mentioned the root essay, you can tell from the essay number that it already existed as rough notes back in September 2004.

Anyway, it bugged me a lot that that essay was incomplete, but now it's done and I can move on to smaller and better things.

In other news, I added an area over on the right-hand side that shows the history of the current essay. I've been wanting to do that for years, I just couldn't figure out the right design. For more information, see Notes on the History Block.