Embracing Mediocrity

500 Words

One of my goals for this year is to cultivate a writing habit. After writing this, I can say it will definitely be my most challenging as well. Writing about writing, or wanting to write, in this case, is probably cliche, but I figure it is a good a place as any to start. After all, if we recognize the axiom that we should be intentional about what we want to do, then we should have clearly defined intentions. Given I have not written anything serious outside of work since my first-year writing course in university (over 5 years ago), my goal for a first post was to simply write 500 words. 5 paragraphs at 100 words each should be easy, or so I thought.

Writing is hard.

It took me a little under an hour just to come up with that introductory paragraph and it can still be improved. Writing does not come naturally to me as it does to so many others. Growing up, I loved science and mathematics courses - English not so much. In my day-to-day work, the act of writing is fairly limited and I would characterize most instances of it as lowbrow - things like email, chat messages and commits. Occasionally, I get the chance to write some form of a design document which is much more involved but these chances are few and far between.

So, why do this? Playing RuneScape growing up, or any video game really, I would only grind a skill if there was a purpose (e.g. if it helped me complete a mission). If my current writing ability satisfies the need required for daily life, what is the point in spending valuable free time doing it?

Thinking is good.

I saw this Tweet recently.

Reading won't be obsolete till writing is, and writing won't be obsolete till thinking is.

I follow Paul Graham. As a stereotypical "tech bro", that may be cringeworthy, but I find many of his blog posts intriguing and inspiring.

In "Writing, Briefly", he states the following:

I think it's far more important to write well than most people realize. Writing doesn't just communicate ideas; it generates them. If you're bad at writing and don't like to do it, you'll miss out on most of the ideas writing would have generated.

This point has particularly stuck with me and especially rung true writing this. Good writing typically forces an author to be extremely deliberate. This seems to hold true regardless of the form. A story has a beginning, a middle and an end, though they don't necessarily have to arrive in that order. Characters have defining attributes displayed or hidden.

In everything I do, I would like to be more deliberate - to think more not only about what I am doing, but how I am doing it. I am convinced that this is one of the keys to victory - whatever that may mean in the context of my life.

A habit of writing can only reinforce this underlying goal. If there is one thing a career in Software Engineering has told me so far, it is that the truest gauge of understanding anything is one's ability to explain it - be it technology, existential philosophy or how to change a tire. This is the essence of the Feynman Technique.

Thinking is good. I should think about what I am doing at work and be able to justify whether or not it is actually valuable. I should think more about interesting ideas that come up riding the bus home. I should think about my guiding principles. If I can effectively write about these things, be it privately or publicly, then I can truly understand them. To me, the upside here is undeniably worthwhile.

What next?

So, given I would like to write more, how do I actually go about doing it? Frankly speaking, I am not sure. This new blog is probably a start in the right direction. Ben Kuhn's "Why and how to write things on the Internet" was particularly helpful here and has a few takeaways worth remembering going forward:

Whether or not I continue writing is yet to be seen, but at least now my intention is clear, or at the very least, somewhat clearer, and with that, I have successfully written words.

If you liked this, consider following me @clauss.