A Year(ish) of Writing
Written in 2020
“It is we ourselves who must answer the questions that life asks of us, and to these questions, we can respond only by being responsible for our existence.”
Viktor Frankl on the Meaning of Life
Early July last year I decided to commit to publishing a blog post every Tuesday. Back then I would have never imagined that I would write a blog, let alone stick with it for over a year, but I was inspired by Austin Kleon’s book Show Your Work and how Ramit Sethi turned a blog into a multi-million dollar business. To me, writing a blog seemed to be something worth doing even if nothing came of it.
“A blog is the ideal machine for turning flow into stock: One little blog post is nothing on its own, but publish a thousand blog posts over a decade, and it turns into your life’s work.”
Austin Kleon (Show Your Work)
So every week I would try to write about a topic that I would want to flesh out in one of my future projects, but if I couldn’t meet the deadline then I would release a personal post instead. I didn’t need to fact-check or research my thoughts on things, so they were much easier to produce than the other posts.
At first, I felt that sharing my thoughts was indulgent, lazy, and narcissistic, but looking back those have become my favorite to read. It’s fun to get to know a previous version of myself, especially one that I’m willing to make public. Reading journals, songs, poems, and other personal works is cool, but there’s something different about reading my public writing – it’s like I’m getting to experience what I’m like through other people’s eyes.
When I first started posting personal posts, I felt that I was polluting my work, especially since I would post them just to keep a deadline and I failed to complete another post on time. Looking back now, I can see that it’s not pollution, but evidence of my evolution. This week I was slightly on track to writing another post that would advance my projects, but I felt a pull to write a more personal post instead. (I also felt the pressure of knowing that the next two days I would be working overtime & I’m not feeling up to that right now).
I wanted to allow myself to step back and reflect on what developing my writing has done for me. I’ve conquered a personal mountain, but not just that, I’ve transformed myself in the process and taken my achievements further than I expected them to go. I owe it to myself to take a moment and marvel at my hard work and sacrifice.
What Writing Has Done For Me
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961)
Blogging has completely changed my relationship with doing difficult things and doing them consistently. This switch has given me the reasoning that catapulted my recent physical fitness revolution. I would think things like “If I could blog for a year, then I could do a workout today” or “Doing these workouts is easier than writing” and it would be enough for me to get going. Now I’m in (almost) the best shape I’ve ever been in my entire life and it is because of writing this blog. We see ourselves do things and make conclusions about who we are based on those observations.
I used to hate writing, so much so that I majored in engineering partly to get as far away as possible from essays and reading. I used to see myself as a “math & science” guy so I didn’t need to know how to write papers and read boring documents.
How shortsighted was I?
I was still holding on to that identity when I first started writing. The language I used was mathematical, but I supposed that was just the language I was able to express myself with.
Today I pride myself on my ability to speak my mind and explain myself. I have a broader vocabulary that allows me to express my thoughts more clearly and accurately. I used to believe I was well-spoken and articulate, but I see now that I’m not. Human beings are capable of having thoughts so complex that they transcend their linguistic abilities and I’ve been using writing as a means to access the ability to communicate these complicated thoughts. Now I know enough to know that I will never consider myself as well-spoken or articulate as I’d like to be or as I’d need to be. The complexity of our thoughts has no upper limit and as my linguistic skills improve, so will my capacity for thinking.
My writing used to be short and choppy. It’s no surprise though because I didn’t have access to the language I needed to properly express myself. I also didn’t realize how much communication I assumed would translate when I started writing. When we’re writing we have to spell out every little thing, I needed to stop assuming the reader would “just get what I mean.” Now, I’ve branched out – my thoughts and writings are more thorough than before. For a long time, I had to try hard to lengthen my responses to things, but now I find that I have to try harder to keep things short.
This blog has helped me form my thoughts together. Writing is truly the most sophisticated form of thinking. Now that I’m better at writing, I’m a better thinker and a better communicator. I say um and other filler words less often. People have complimented me on my way with words, even though I know I could be way more articulate, blogging has made me more linguistically adept than the average person and gives me an edge in everyday conversation.
Since I knew that writing often would improve my thinking, I originally used my blog as a stepping stone for me to refine my ideas to build an effective and lucrative online course, but over the past year and some change, it’s evolved into so much more. It still carries the original purpose of refining my thoughts for my future courses, curriculums, and books, but it’s also become a place for me to share my thoughts, transform my identity, and draw confidence.