What up doe!
I’m back on this blog after a long hiatus.
I started writing on here back in January, because I was unemployed and needed something constructive to work on. I also enjoyed the accountability and structure that came from publicly writing about my goals, and the satisfaction that came from creating something regularly. When the job search was going poorly (and oh boy was it going poorly in January), it was nice to have something that was entirely in my control and didn’t depend on my resume being picked out of a stack of a 1,000. I was also hoping that if I did some cool stuff on my blog, that I could talk about it in interviews.
But a few things happened that caused my posts to drop off:
- I got a job! This is by far the most exciting development. I don’t have as much time to write because I’m working full-time
- I wasn’t sure the direction I wanted to take this blog. Do I want this to be professional? Personal? Do I want to make this into something a lot of people read? Is it mostly just for me and whoever wants to ride along? Or do I want to just focus on updating myself and my friends? I felt like it was easier to cut down on posting until I had an idea of the direction I wanted to take
- Related to the prior point – someone read the blog! When I started posting on here, I didn’t actually expect anyone to read it. I had a link to this blog in my Instagram bio, and it’s linked on hiddn.co (which is the first result for my name), so it was fair game. But someone I had only recently met called me out on being too hard on myself from things I had posted on this blog, and it made me think about the nature of this medium. Am I too hard on myself (probably)? Or does this blog, which is only a portion of my life, give the impression that I’m too hard on myself (also potentially true)? It made me (over)think about how I present myself on this blog, which made me more anxious about posting.
But I’ve been in my new city for nearly two months now, and I feel like I’m settling into a routine. I also see the value of making time to write regularly, so I’m hoping to re-launch this blog (and this writing habit).
How does this blog fit?
I’ve brainstormed a few ways that this blog can fit into my life.
1. Building in public
There’s an idea in the tech and startups world about building in public. Traditionally, the idea was that if you’re building a company you should be secretive about the struggles you face in building it. The idea of building in public is that you do the opposite, and very transparently talk about the challenges and struggles you face in building a company. The idea is that by writing about it publicly you a) get help from people who have faced similar challenges b) build trust with customers and stakeholders and c) get free marketing by offering useful information and insights into your company and industry.
When I started writing in January, I thought about this blog as an experiment of building a life in public. Life is really hard, and I feel like there’s a lot of pressure on social media and in the general approach to careers and such to pretend like you have it all figured out. But in practice, no one really has it all figured out so it would be better if we were all honest about the struggles of life. I was hoping that by taking the “building in public” approach to my life, that I would be able to a) help other people in similar situations feel they’re not alone in our common challenges, b) provide useful insights to others based on how I approach those challenges, as well as any lessons or mistakes I made and c) find a sense of community through the power of the internet.
I walked back away from that view because I was job searching. Though it was unlikely, I was worried that an employer would see my blog and perceive me as less competent because I was honest about things I struggle with (like, I’m really bad at grocery shopping and cooking regularly; I sometimes forget to do laundry for way longer than is probably appropriate) without learning about the things that make me valuable in the workplace. For example, I’m good at writing, structured problem solving (thanks computer science and philosophy), analysis with data, figuring things outs (startups!), and I care a lot about making the organizations and places that I inhabit better.
I’ve decided that I’m going to stick with the building in public mentality – but focus more on my life, rather than my career. I like that this, along with hiddn.co, is a creative outlet and I don’t want to bring work or career into it. However, it’s inevitable that I talk about the dichotomy between work and life to some degree.
2. Sharing interesting things I learn
I read a lot of stuff on the internet. Someone once told me that I was full of interesting knowledge, which I think was a compliment but I’m still not sure. Anyway, I find a lot of things interesting so I like reading about them, and it would be nice to share them in a format that’s visible to others.
3. Clarifying my thinking
I also find writing helpful to clarify my thinking on topics. It requires a higher level of lucidity to write out – in words that are intelligible to other people – how you feel about a given thing. It forces me to think better, and occasionally helps change my views on things.
I’d like to veer more into writing about opinions. Not necessarily political opinions, but just about topics or observations I’ve had. This scares me because it opens me up to criticism, and the fact that people might disagree with me (or that I might be wrong), but I think it’s important to get over that fear.
4. Holding myself accountable to goals
One of the initial reasons I started this blog was because I used to read the blog of Benny the Irish Polyglot at Fluentin3Months.com. The nature of his blog has changed since I started reading them (it’s now a business, so it feels more like a marketing channel). But when I started, he would travel to different countries for 3 months (the length of a tourist visa), and try to get fluent in the language.
One thing he recommended was publicly committing to a goal, which he did through his blog. I also tried doing that with the plethora of posts I’ve written about language learning, but I haven’t really made that much progress on my language goals this year (because I was focused on finding a job and moving).
But there are some projects that I want to work on that I feel like I won’t do unless there’s some public pressure. I also find that I learn better or focus on goals if I write about my progress.
Here are some projects that I know I want to work on:
- A few months ago, I was in Detroit for the first time since the fall of 2021. I took a bunch of footage of places that were important to me in Detroit with my friend Madison. I haven’t yet edited them, and she’s going to get mad at me if I never create a video out of it, so I need to do that
- Freelance writing. I want to start freelance writing (again). The process of freelance writing is much more involved than writing on this blog, so I’ve been putting it off until now. I’m hoping that by writing here it will help push me along on that process.
Things I haven’t figured out yet
What kind of writing goes where?
Another reason I stopped writing was that I now have a few different places to put my writing, and I wasn’t really sure what should go where. Besides this blog, I have a Substack, a Medium, a Dev.to, NithPol (another blog) and TeluguNotes. The Dev and NithPol accounts are largely dormant, with the intention of the latter having been replaced by the Substack. I use Medium for technical posts.
I’m not really sure what kind of writing should go on each site. For now, I’ve defaulted to writing everything on this blog because I’ve been using it for longer. Unlike Substack, posts on here don’t go out as emails so my perfectionist tendencies don’t make me feel weird about just writing a short, 300 word post and sending it out without much thought. On Substack, I feel like my writing has to be better because it does end up in people’s inboxes, and I feel like my readers (3 so far) deserve higher quality posts.
How much do I want to promote this?
This goes back to one of the reasons I stopped writing in the first place. Do I want this to be super public and promoted? Or do I just want it to be out there and whoever finds it, finds it. That probably speaks to some deeper fears I have about judgement. But that will be fine.