On Writing: A Retrospective

Been reading Cory Doctorow a lot lately.

Just today:

It has me thinking about my own blogging and writing. For me, writing is therapeutic and helps to organize my thoughts. I keep quite extensive journals but my writing ebbs and flows based on a lot of factors: how busy I am, my general mood, etc

I started xorvoid because I wanted to try doing more of it in public. But frankly I’ve always felt pretty nervous to be completely free to write what I like. This site has unfortunately felt too much like a personal brand or a log of technical work I'm most proud of rather than a stream of consciousness writing. The later I feel increasingly drawn to.

Journaling

I now have extensive enough journals to be able to do the “lookback” trick, which was one of my original goals when I started extensively journaling in 2019 (ish). I had read Penn Jillette’s book "Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales" about his weight loss via the potato diet. The part that I found most interesting is where he revealed being an extensive journaler his entire life. He journals every day and then goes back to read 1, 5, 10 year entries. As someone with a poor personal memory, I thought this was a fabulous way to live life -- in constant dialog with past and future selves.

At about the same time I was trying to understand the design of a time-series database called InfluxDB. In some presentation it was said “if you understand how Bullet Journaling works, you understand InfluxDB”. I thought I understood InfluxDB, so Bullet Journaling sounded pretty great: just write down thoughts on an append-only log and organize/optimize later.

And thus I discovered Bullet Journaling. That served me very well in the early years and solved the ADHD problem I had before; namely, most recording methods were too complicated. Bullet Journaling said: just write and get it out of your head. So I did.

Over time, I found the organization and migration steps to be too much for me, but I seem to have retained the “append-only” log aspects.

This has mostly evolved into a single Very Long note (originally in Notion, now in Obsidian) where I can at any time for any reason just add the date and write stream of consciousness.

But a good 99% of those writings stay private. It’s some kind of shyness or nervousness that keeps it that way. Or perhaps even an idea that the internet is forever and do I really want the naive words of my younger self being dredged up when I'm old? (Or is it really: How to disappear completely?)

But, I am drawn to the idea that some (incl. Doctorow) espouse of “write everyday”. I want to do that, but I have trouble. I want my writing to be “well-formed” or “well-considered” and frankly I can’t meet that standard everyday.

A lot of this is just on me to lower the bar. That’s not to say “intentionally publishing crap”, but instead it’s to say:

  1. It’s really not important for every post to be good or meaningful (e.g. Doctorow doesn’t make that a requirement, by his own admission), and
  2. The overall process is more important that the transient daily output.

Habits and Optimizing the Integral

The later is another lesson that I had to learn. For many years, I had a “work with intensity right now and all in one big effort” mentality. This served me remarkably well in my early 20s, but faltered by my 30s as I started attempting more complicated longer-horizon projects with more setbacks and uncertainty.

I had started reading about habit formation and inspiration came from two books:

And it dawned on me that I was trying to optimize for instantaneous rate-of-change rather than optimizing the integral, area under the curve. It’s not how fast you accomplish something at a particular moment, but instead how much you accomplish over an interval of time. If the time interval is small, the difference isn’t very important. If the time interval is large, the difference is critical!

The advice of writing everyday is in the same vain. If you wish to write for a non-trivial period of time, the output per session is less critical than the frequency of sessions. But still I have trouble committing myself to the regular task.

Retrospective

A lot is on my mind at the moment.

Nearly two years ago (at the end of 2022) I left what many would call a “dream job”. I’m not going to unpack that, but suffice to say that leaving was one of my best decisions in life. It’s one of those few moments that you have to make a hard and “textbook wrong” decision where others ask if you’ve gone mad and you proceed anyways. The intervening two years have been more than I could have hoped for (I’ve thought to list it all out, but that will have to wait). Two years on I can say unequivocally that it was the right move for me. I simply can’t imagine what I would trade that time away for.

But, in February, I’m planning to start a new career adventure and I’m not entirely sure what that means overall. But, it has me a little retrospective in a season (Christmas and New Years) where I tend to be naturally extra retrospective.

A particular retrospective is this blog. I’m proud of the work I’ve posted here. I was excited to be able to share projects and crazy ideas in public. But, frankly I’ve always wanted this to be something different. I think I’ve wanted this as a place where I could post more stream of consciousness writing rather than just “crazy project reports”. But, I’ve felt a little conflicted about (1) sharing personal feelings publicly and (2) jumbling up the content. The former is a personal problem, the later is a website identity crisis. How are posts about SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytes supposed to live next to my ramblings about the Opioid Crisis after watching Dope Sick? (An article I wrote and never published, which I regret)

The answer, I think, is to just not care. Like Doctorow, I don’t run this website to build a brand. I have no tracking and little interest in “growth hacking”. I have zero ambition to be an influencer. I have no interest in making this a business, nor even as a form of "resume farming". And my readership would be clamped to zero in any numerical computation (i.e. n_readers < epsilon).

The Future?

Instead, I think the question is “what value do I derive from this?” I already have a private journal. What’s the point in making it public? Doctorow’s answer is that writing public forces you to write better. I agree. But that goal alone is merely self-referential without a more deeply motivated reason to write. For Doctorow it’s his convictions on internet freedom, owning one’s own data, etc. I agree with those, but have trouble finding them a singular motivation personally.

Instead, for me writing remains simply a therapy device. One I can use to quiet the brain chatter and refocus. Does it need to be public to serve those goals? Or perhaps my general anxiety around public writing is hijacking my sentiment.

I don't have an answer. If you're expecting a happy ending, this is not your kind of movie...

I want to say that I'll commit to writing more regularly in 2025. I want to say that I'll take a daily approach. I want to say that I'll let go and write what I want publicly, but I just don't know.

Just some rambling thoughts I had while walking around that I decided to actually publish.

Anyways... Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to all epsilon of you!