Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

A couple of years back I started dabbling in the social sciences and humanities (my background is in ecology / evolutionary biology), and became interested in one discipline after another. From psychology to history of science to anthropology and sociology, to economics and politics, to philosophy and religious studies and cultural studies, etc.

I find it intrinsically motivating to move from ignorance slowly towards understanding. I love reading textbooks to learn basic concepts and looking through academic titles just to swim in their ideas.

While I loved university, I won't be able to handle the demands of formal schooling (especially not while raising a family). I also wouldn't want to do any advanced research degrees as I have no patience in studying a small set of problems (I tried it for science and it was horrendous).

While I have no issue just continuing to explore these subjects privately, I feel like something is missing. I feel like I want to do something more tangible with this breadth of interests, but I'm coming up empty in terms of ideas. I like writing and can imagine having some sort of blog, but that's seems so cliche?

Any suggestions? Perhaps examples of something others have done with their broad interests?

What does one do with an intellectual life other than swimming through intellectual content?

Read a couple of books by Barbara sher: Refuse to choose [0]

She calls people like us "Scanners" and claims that our diversity of interests is not a weakness, but a strength. Then goes on techniques to make this skill work for us.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594863032/

This is a good reason to look for real problems to solve, and work on solving those. This could be non-profit or for-profit.

I might have to check this out. Im skeptical of it being a strength in today's world. So far, it seems to only be a weakness for me.

I feel your pain. I've made multiple websites that are designed as broad-based solutions to things I observe. It can be a bit frustrating finding a specific interest to dive into.

At least in my life, I've discovered that it's important to NOT identify with your interests. While this is a generally important rule, broad interests are toxic to the psyche if you declare your worth by them, since the implementation will vary (e.g., your psych and history may be spot-on, and you might suck at understanding philosophy).

I've read a few Paul Graham essays on the subject, and they're worth poking around. My takeaway is that you are free to do what you love, but find a day job in the meantime. My bias is to steer clear of academia, but you may fare better in that group of people than me if you're not the out-of-the-box thinker type.

And, for your second question, find a way to create. You're clearly hitting up against the wall I've hit against: how do you make an "original thing" that thousands of other people haven't done already?

The answer to that, put very simply, is that you are a unique person. Your personality, sure, but whatever we philosophically represent as the "soul" is the thing that fuels all your creative endeavors, and it flavors everything.

For example, I used to be a fan of the Myst computer game, and have recently been poking around with its sequels. You can actually feel over the series the dilution of original "spark" that the two brothers had in the original.

So, find an expressive form to make what you want. It doesn't have to be fancy, but once you incubate a vision of it, you'll naturally fill in the blanks of what it would be. Off the top of my head, building out an LMS using existing information would be a good start, or finding a way to index/archive more finicky aspects of large repositories of information (such as associative keywords toward economics).