Epistemic status: personal reflections on my life and worldviews.
AI use: review, grammar and readability changes.
I discovered Inkhaven recently, and it got me interested in writing. Partly I want to produce posts for the application, and partly - why wait until it starts when I can just start writing now? This made me think about why I haven't written much before.
The most obvious reason is that I didn't have an explicit trigger to do so, and discovering Inkhaven became that trigger. My life was fine without writing. I did try to write something approximately once a year, but it wouldn't get much interest (I know that this is not a good goal), and I would get disappointed and quit until the next breeze of inspiration.
I also read what other people write, and I constantly get the impression that I don't have anything to add. They look so cool and know so much and write such elaborate things, which are interesting and exciting. And I am not cool, don't know as much, and write boring things. I understand rationally that they didn't magically fall out of the sky as good writers, and they've probably written their own share of boring stuff on the way there. There is also selection bias, both in terms of writers and the pieces they write - I am much more likely to encounter their good stuff.
@jefftk is an interesting counterexample that comes to mind. I've read quite a lot of his writing even though I don't have children, don't do contra dancing, and don't even live in a communal house. But it was still interesting to explore these things through his perspective. I also saw him at LessOnline, and he looked like a mere mortal, just like me. To be fair, he did produce very nicely researched bangers like "Here's to the Polypropylene Makers", so he might be slowly leaving us mere mortals and transitioning into the pantheon of good writers. From this perspective, my life is fairly unique too, and I do a bunch of unusual stuff that many people don't, so perhaps me writing about it would be of interest to someone.
Writing itself does not feel hard. At least not in this personal blog post style. I suspect proper research with a strong, well-developed argument would be hard, but here you can just blabber out loud. But then the question is: why even do it? In this case, I am just curious to write, and according to Inkhaven you don't need any concrete reason - just by getting the reps in, apparently some magic will happen. I am curious to see that.
Another reason why I didn't write much - you have to be somewhat vulnerable, and people might reject that. E.g., if you write personal stuff, you give your readers a peek into your mind & soul, and that's a weird thing to do with internet strangers. If you do some cool research, perhaps your argument is wrong, or perhaps no one even cares about the topic you picked. On the other hand, this has an interesting filtering effect - perhaps 100 people don't like your writing, but there is one who really loves it, you resonate well, and you become friends. As with dating, being polarizing is not easy, but it pays off well.
There is also no clear ROI on writing. You might hypothetically write something interesting, a bunch of people will read it and learn about you, and you will get something out of it. But you probably won't. Obviously, if you care about a specific message and want to deliver it, your ROI is better, but I don't care about any particular message for now. I guess this just reflects that I didn't have intrinsic motivation to write and couldn't find extrinsic motivation either. On second thought, having to write for money, for example, sounds terrible to me.
A minor concern I have about writing is privacy. While each post on its own does not tell much, if you keep writing for years, eventually you will give enough clues for someone to solve the puzzle. It is not bad per se, but it feels a bit concerning - what will they do with that info? Will they like or hate you? In Russian, there is an expression "тише едешь, дальше будешь", which Claude kindly translated as "The quieter you ride, the further you'll be," and proposed "Slow and steady wins the race" as the closest English equivalent. I was surprised by this. My interpretation was "if you don't attract attention, you will live longer," & there is a sentiment of "don't stir the pot and you will be fine." Writing is stirring the pot, at least a bit. I understand that you can have a totally chill life with nothing happening by hiding and never expressing yourself, but it won't be satisfying. An appropriate amount of risk is good for you.
A funny detour - as a child, following that principle, I wanted not only to have a bunch of money when I grew up, but also for no one else to know about my money. I suspect most people would go for both fame & money by default.
I think these are all the reasons I didn't write before (at least all I can think of for now). I find it weirdly pleasant to write right now. I think once you remove the pressure of expecting any results, it functions like a nice meditation and deep-focus work. With all the distractions of the modern world (and mostly 10 Claude Code sessions running all at once), I miss the deep work. Previously, you could focus on one piece of code or system architecture for 2-3 hours and just forget that you exist. Now you have to keep switching from context to context. It is also enjoyable to just start writing, even when you don't feel like it. I hope this is the same muscle that's involved when you're stuck with some complicated piece of work and can't start it, so I can train it and get better at both. I also feel like writing is very aligned with thinking. Often, when I wrote something previously, I would reach some conclusion as part of the writing, and the post itself would become useless to me, so I wouldn't even finish it. Claude pointed out to me that this is yet another reason I didn't write and might be the biggest one, which is interesting, since I hadn't perceived it as such. I guess blabbering helps, since there is no other intention than just to write.
Epistemic status: personal reflections on my life and worldviews.
AI use: review, grammar and readability changes.
I discovered Inkhaven recently, and it got me interested in writing. Partly I want to produce posts for the application, and partly - why wait until it starts when I can just start writing now? This made me think about why I haven't written much before.
The most obvious reason is that I didn't have an explicit trigger to do so, and discovering Inkhaven became that trigger. My life was fine without writing. I did try to write something approximately once a year, but it wouldn't get much interest (I know that this is not a good goal), and I would get disappointed and quit until the next breeze of inspiration.
I also read what other people write, and I constantly get the impression that I don't have anything to add. They look so cool and know so much and write such elaborate things, which are interesting and exciting. And I am not cool, don't know as much, and write boring things. I understand rationally that they didn't magically fall out of the sky as good writers, and they've probably written their own share of boring stuff on the way there. There is also selection bias, both in terms of writers and the pieces they write - I am much more likely to encounter their good stuff.
@jefftk is an interesting counterexample that comes to mind. I've read quite a lot of his writing even though I don't have children, don't do contra dancing, and don't even live in a communal house. But it was still interesting to explore these things through his perspective. I also saw him at LessOnline, and he looked like a mere mortal, just like me. To be fair, he did produce very nicely researched bangers like "Here's to the Polypropylene Makers", so he might be slowly leaving us mere mortals and transitioning into the pantheon of good writers. From this perspective, my life is fairly unique too, and I do a bunch of unusual stuff that many people don't, so perhaps me writing about it would be of interest to someone.
Writing itself does not feel hard. At least not in this personal blog post style. I suspect proper research with a strong, well-developed argument would be hard, but here you can just blabber out loud. But then the question is: why even do it? In this case, I am just curious to write, and according to Inkhaven you don't need any concrete reason - just by getting the reps in, apparently some magic will happen. I am curious to see that.
Another reason why I didn't write much - you have to be somewhat vulnerable, and people might reject that. E.g., if you write personal stuff, you give your readers a peek into your mind & soul, and that's a weird thing to do with internet strangers. If you do some cool research, perhaps your argument is wrong, or perhaps no one even cares about the topic you picked. On the other hand, this has an interesting filtering effect - perhaps 100 people don't like your writing, but there is one who really loves it, you resonate well, and you become friends. As with dating, being polarizing is not easy, but it pays off well.
There is also no clear ROI on writing. You might hypothetically write something interesting, a bunch of people will read it and learn about you, and you will get something out of it. But you probably won't. Obviously, if you care about a specific message and want to deliver it, your ROI is better, but I don't care about any particular message for now. I guess this just reflects that I didn't have intrinsic motivation to write and couldn't find extrinsic motivation either. On second thought, having to write for money, for example, sounds terrible to me.
A minor concern I have about writing is privacy. While each post on its own does not tell much, if you keep writing for years, eventually you will give enough clues for someone to solve the puzzle. It is not bad per se, but it feels a bit concerning - what will they do with that info? Will they like or hate you? In Russian, there is an expression "тише едешь, дальше будешь", which Claude kindly translated as "The quieter you ride, the further you'll be," and proposed "Slow and steady wins the race" as the closest English equivalent. I was surprised by this. My interpretation was "if you don't attract attention, you will live longer," & there is a sentiment of "don't stir the pot and you will be fine." Writing is stirring the pot, at least a bit. I understand that you can have a totally chill life with nothing happening by hiding and never expressing yourself, but it won't be satisfying. An appropriate amount of risk is good for you.
A funny detour - as a child, following that principle, I wanted not only to have a bunch of money when I grew up, but also for no one else to know about my money. I suspect most people would go for both fame & money by default.
I think these are all the reasons I didn't write before (at least all I can think of for now). I find it weirdly pleasant to write right now. I think once you remove the pressure of expecting any results, it functions like a nice meditation and deep-focus work. With all the distractions of the modern world (and mostly 10 Claude Code sessions running all at once), I miss the deep work. Previously, you could focus on one piece of code or system architecture for 2-3 hours and just forget that you exist. Now you have to keep switching from context to context. It is also enjoyable to just start writing, even when you don't feel like it. I hope this is the same muscle that's involved when you're stuck with some complicated piece of work and can't start it, so I can train it and get better at both. I also feel like writing is very aligned with thinking. Often, when I wrote something previously, I would reach some conclusion as part of the writing, and the post itself would become useless to me, so I wouldn't even finish it. Claude pointed out to me that this is yet another reason I didn't write and might be the biggest one, which is interesting, since I hadn't perceived it as such. I guess blabbering helps, since there is no other intention than just to write.