On Writing

New year, new medium.

This is not me and this is not what I look like when I write, but I’ll bet his writing is excellent. Photo by Steven Houston on Unsplash

Writing is important. Like, really, really important. It’s one of the most important things we can do, for two reasons.

Number one, writing is good for you because it’s one of the best ways to organize the crazy thoughts in your head and translate them into something that’s legible to other people. This requires tethering oneself and one’s ideas to some form of objective reality. Writing requires reading and considering, and it involves thinking about and engaging with the world. Even the most absurdist fiction engages with and has something to say about reality (albeit in a contrarian fashion). In this way, writing is good for you even if you don’t share it.

Number two, writing is good for the world because it’s like a dating app for ideas: it’s how ideas find one another, have sex, and breed even better ideas. This is “the engine of human progress and prosperity.” As popular, creative, and dynamic as TikTok may be, long form writing is still a better way of doing this.

In 2020, my first serious year of writing, I wrote every day and published something every week on Etherean.org (professional) or Applescotch.com (personal). It was messy, challenging, and frustrating, but at the end of the year I was stunned to look back and realize how much I had written and published, how much I had learned in the process, and how proud I was. Also, the process got much faster and easier as I got better at it.

I took a week off at the beginning of 2021, life intervened, and I never got back into the habit of writing. Until now. The calendar year is of course arbitrary but it’s as good an opportunity as any to boot up a new habit (or bring back an old one).

I haven’t figured out precisely what form my writing will take this year but I will write every day and publish at least some of it here. My first experiment is called Three Things (hence the name of this newsletter): a periodic list of three brief thoughts about work, life, current events, or things I’ve read, seen, or heard recently.

With that, I’m excited to dive in and start writing! Reach out on Twitter anytime and let me know what you think.