Init

01 Aug 2022

For the next 30 days, I’m going to publish something on my blog everyday.

A writing challenge? Experiment? New habit? It doesn’t matter how you brand it, that’s what we’re doing now.

Why am I doing this? The short answer is writing is good and I’m looking to do more of it. The simple act of consistent writing has served me well throughout my life; it’s been my most trusted cornerman, therapist, and BS detector at different times. I might expand on that in a later post, but really, you don’t need another tech person to preach the “writing is thinking” meme.

As for writing publicly (vs. say, sticking with the journal + letters to family & friends, where I’ve done most of my writing in recent years) — I’ve always appreciated it when other people write publicly. Whether it’s the one-off blog post from years back or a more regular newsletter, I find that reading a person’s writing online gives me a small window into how they view the world, which in turn helps jumpstart a deeper connection if and when I do meet them.

This project has been slowly marinating in my “Someday” list for a while. It just so happens that this summer is about as good timing as I’m ever going to have to actually do it. So I am.

I’ve picked 30 days as a goal because it seems to strike the balance between “C’mon, how hard could it be to do anything for only 30 days?” and, if I’m successful, “Hmm, I’m actually pretty proud I did that!”

I’ve also intentionally left out any qualifications on the writing itself, like whether it ought to be any good. Instead, I’m preemptively giving myself a cringe pass on what I’ll be writing and plan to lean towards sharing the raw, the beliefs loosely held, the one-edit-past-stream-of-consciousness. I might one day invest in better researched, structured, insightful pieces, but that’s not today. Right now I’m more focused on getting going than getting good.

A win for me looks like getting over perfectionism paralysis and training the muscle of shipping daily. The only way to fail is to overthink and give up.

I don’t know exactly what I’ll be writing about yet. But if the stuff in my notes app is any indication, the bulk of it will likely orbit technology, business, and the lessons of history. But don’t be shocked if I sprinkle in my musings on art, programming, markets/investing, sports, decision-making, and other meaty topics, I hope. All is fair game.

To the extent anything I write here can be construed as “advice,” it’s at most advice for myself — past, present, or future. If someone else out there finds what I write interesting or helpful, I’ll be stoked (& would love to know!), but at the end of the day, this is a selfish project, in the sense that it really is more for me than it is for you.

I’ll probably repeat myself quite a bit in the coming weeks, and that’s okay. Anything worth writing about is worth writing about to excess.

This is going to be fun. Let’s get started!