Epistemic Status: General introspection
Writing Duration: 37m
I’ve been batting with this question for quite some time now. On one side, there are the obvious benefits like making my thoughts more coherent by writing for others, using blogging as a forcing function to think deeply about stuff, putting my thoughts out there for anyone to read, and getting feedback on them. But on the other side are cons like effort, public display of thoughts, and the opportunity cost.
Looking at the above list, I think the scale tips a little towards yes. But I think the best way is to just try this out as an experiment and then decide. I have intuitively arrived at this conclusion multiple times in the past, but have never converted it into persistent action.
I think this is because of two things. First: I’m lazy. I like to think and write, but I get extremely turned-off when I think about formatting my writing so that it can be readable as an isolated blog post by someone else. Ugh. But it’s possible that doing this makes me understand my thoughts better. Sorta like the Feynman Technique. It might be worth it to see if it actually happens and is noticeable.
The second reason is that I’m (very) scared of putting my thoughts out into the public - open for everyone in the world to see (potentially forever). I’m not scared of my thoughts being pointed out as incorrect, I would love that. So what am I scared about then? It’s probably Imposter Syndrome. I don’t feel like I have anything worthy to say. Hmm, that’s stupid. Nevertheless, I have a solution for this fear.
My imposter syndrome stems from the fact that I feel like I don’t have anything important to say, and if I do ask people to read my blog - I would just be wasting their time. So, the solution I’m gonna go with is that I won’t be asking anyone to read this blog! I won’t market it, or even actively talk about it. If people do find this, it would be through their own initiative. And then if they find it boring, eh I didn’t ask you to read it.
Now, let’s conduct an experiment. From 18th Aug to 1st Sept, I will write 10 blog posts. I won’t be judging myself on the quality of the posts yet, so my only criteria for this experiment’s success is if I’m able to write 10 posts by 1st Sept. There have been quite a few interesting things that I would like to write about, so I’m actually excited about this. All right! This was my first post :)