Writing on the internet is hard

I work for a company called Ghost, which runs an internet publishing platform — the same platform that served you this website. In a very real way, people writing on the internet is currently responsible for my livelihood. It pays for the food I eat, my healthcare, the roof over my head, and my dog's monthly appointment with the vet tech to get his anal glands expressed. If everyone suddenly stopped writing on the internet, I'd be out of a really good job, and I'd have to find a different way to spend my time and make a living.

I've seen the positive impact that writing on the internet can have on people's lives. Many of our customers at Ghost have been able to provide for themselves and their families by consistently writing on the internet, freeing themselves from the corporate grind and providing a lifestyle that would have been unimaginable even 20 years ago. It's by no means a get rich quick scheme, but there are plenty of real people who've been able to independently make a good living just by sharing their thoughts with the world on a regular cadence.

I know that I should write on the internet more, and I want to, but I always struggle to actually do it. I've redesigned this site numerous times over the years (as is my duty as a web developer), but as you can plainly see, I've never really published anything other than a basic About page. Writing on the internet may not be the same kind of hard as, say, doing manual labor in a field or factory, but it is hard.

Writing is hard on its own, even without publishing it to the whole world. It requires a degree of focus and clarity of thought and mental energy that I'm frankly not always blessed with, especially after spending most of my days reading and writing pretty much non-stop in the course of my day job.

When you add the emotional effort required to actually share the things I write with the world, my brain seems to just halt and catch fire. Sharing your ideas with the internet is an act that requires vulnerability, and overcoming my own insecurities enough to even contemplate doing so seems to consume all my mental energy, leaving nothing left to actually do the writing itself.

What should I write about? Who cares about what I have to say? Does the world need another take on AI from another white guy living in Silicon Valley? Do I have even a single original idea that is worth sharing with the world? What if everyone finally finds out that actually I'm an idiot and a fraud? What if my grandmother reads it and she's disappointed in me for spending my Sundays tinkering with home assistant instead of going to church? What if I read my own writing 2 years from now and inevitably cringe at my own words and ideas? These questions seem to take up all the space in my head, leaving no room for coherent thoughts to make their way out in an orderly fashion.

But despite the difficulty of the act itself, and despite my insecurities getting in the way, and despite the numerous false starts I've had over the years, the idea of consistently writing on the internet is something that I keep coming back to. And usually it's the ideas that I keep coming back to that turn out to be the most important.

So buckle up, reader, for this is just the beginning. I'm going to try to start writing on the internet more. As in, actually try. And I'm going to try to be as authentically myself as I can, and I'm going to try not to filter or edit myself too much, and I'm going to try not to take myself too seriously. I don't know what I'll write about, and I make no commitment to sticking to any particular niche, but damn it I'm going to write!

I'll probably write about technology, and my nerdy job and my nerdy hobbies. I might write about sports or politics or process improvement or why the San Jose airport's location is both a blessing and a curse. I might write things that I'm not even sure if I believe, just to see how it feels. I might write about things that are offensive to some people, I will definitely curse and I will probably write things that will disqualify me for future job opportunities or a future in politics, and that's a risk that I am willing to take.

I will probably go long periods of time without posting here. I will probably be very active for a month or two and then disappear long enough for you to forget that I exist, only to reappear with strong opinions about how annoying it is that every SaaS tool in the world now has documents, an issue tracker and a chatbot, so we all just spend our days searching for that thing our coworker said 2 months ago in that Slack channel...or was it in a Notion comment, or in a Linear document, or was it a Slack canvas, or a Github issue? I will definitely be wrong about things all the time, and I will sometimes be open-minded and brave enough to eventually recognize it when I'm wrong, and I reserve the write to change my mind about anything and everything I write.

Most of all, I hope that I get better as I go, not only at the writing bits, but at the everyday-being-a-human bits. Much like physical exercise, writing on the internet feels like an activity that is hard because it is in fact good for me, and it's not meant to be easy, because doing easy things doesn't often lead to growth.

I will definitely cringe at myself for having written this as soon as I hit publish, but if you enjoyed reading this for some reason that I can't currently comprehend, then you're probably exactly the type of person I'd love to meet. Please reach out and introduce yourself if you feel so inclined, and if you're really feeling brave, you can subscribe to receive more of my incoherent ramblings straight to your inbox at irregular intervals.