following scents on the trail

Why I’m starting this blog and my hopes for where it goes.

I used to write 10 articles a week when I worked at Tech In Asia as a tech journalist, but in the last 5 years, I’ve had trouble figuring out what to write, because of the sufferings I went through in life, with the wide open space of my thoughts, the things I’m interested in, and the discourses I wanted to participate in. Truth be told, the narrow band of tech focused my pen. But now I’m expert in nothing and curious about too many topics to count. As a result, it’s been hard to know what to write. Let alone be comfortable with putting my thoughts out to the world.

When I was a child, I grew up with a man named Grandpa Jan. He was one half of a Polish Jewish couple who took in my parents and welcomed them to the world of the Bay Area. We grew so close that I referred them as grandparents and I was named after one of their sons. His wife, my dear Grandma Mia had a long journey from Poland to Italy to California, escaping the Nazis and World War 2 (Beautiful book written about her life titled We Don't Become Refugees by Choice). Luckily for them, they found their home here and luckily for us, we became family.

Before he passed, Grandpa Jan used to visit us and he’d often explore the trails of ants around our home. I was enraptured. These little societies of creatures, seemingly intelligent, built homes and foraged for food right under our noses. As a result, the first job I ever wanted was to be an ant scientist, an entomologist. I wanted to study these wonderful tiny alien worlds right under our feet. And that’s the inspiration for the name of this Substack: Tales from the Trails. An homage to one of the first things I was ever curious about. (ironically, I’m changing this to Minh’s Mind so take anything I see on this substack with a grain of salt)

With pheromones, ants build trails as they wander around the world, essentially smelling their way through trails built by other ants, in the end, to find the food to keep their colony alive. Follow the pathways, that’s what I intend to do here on this minuscule corner of the interwebs. I’m not looking to be a domain expert or influencer. This is just a space to practice my writing, my thinking, and allow myself to be curious. I intend to follow these little trails and tell their tales.