I've been writing for years—mostly sharing on my WhatsApp status for friends, posting some on Facebook (though my account got suspended last month for ‘account integrity’ issues), and saving some pieces in Google Drive just for myself. But late last year, I decided to take it a step further and start a blog.
Right now, I have just 21 subscribers, but it’s amazing to know that there are people who genuinely enjoy what I write. I got a heartwarming email with these words:
"Just keep writing. Not for readers or for any allure of income, but for yourself. You will thank yourself—I have no doubt."
That message, and others like it, mean a lot to me. Writing is something special. As Carl Sagan beautifully put it in Cosmos:
"Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic."
The full quote is -
“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic."
Really, (aside from having an always-online portfolio), the benefits the author talks about are all met by just keeping a journal. No blog necessary.
Since I'm unwilling to feed the LLM bestiary, I stopped blogging or putting my code up on the web at all, but I haven't stopped writing. I still get the vast majority of the benefits that blogging gave me.
I kinda stopped monitoring web-stats because sometimes we pour effort
into an article or episode that gets depressingly low views, while
others - of dubious quality - soar in the ratings. It's that random
"injustice" which feels wrong :)
Yet as TFA says, once you factor out any goals of influence, writing
is an amazing process for research and idea formation in itself.
Cybershow has become a yardstick of how prescient our coverage is and
a growing catalogue of pieces that trace the trajectory of tech in the
past few years.
I think it takes a couple of years and more than a hundred or so
pieces for that value to come into view. So if you just started
blogging/podcasting, give it time.
I have a personal blog where I share my life experiences: https://www.rxjourney.net
I've been writing for years—mostly sharing on my WhatsApp status for friends, posting some on Facebook (though my account got suspended last month for ‘account integrity’ issues), and saving some pieces in Google Drive just for myself. But late last year, I decided to take it a step further and start a blog.
Right now, I have just 21 subscribers, but it’s amazing to know that there are people who genuinely enjoy what I write. I got a heartwarming email with these words:
"Just keep writing. Not for readers or for any allure of income, but for yourself. You will thank yourself—I have no doubt."
That message, and others like it, mean a lot to me. Writing is something special. As Carl Sagan beautifully put it in Cosmos:
"Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic."
The full quote is -
“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic."
- Carl Sagan.
Really, (aside from having an always-online portfolio), the benefits the author talks about are all met by just keeping a journal. No blog necessary.
Since I'm unwilling to feed the LLM bestiary, I stopped blogging or putting my code up on the web at all, but I haven't stopped writing. I still get the vast majority of the benefits that blogging gave me.
All great reasons and so true.
I kinda stopped monitoring web-stats because sometimes we pour effort into an article or episode that gets depressingly low views, while others - of dubious quality - soar in the ratings. It's that random "injustice" which feels wrong :)
Yet as TFA says, once you factor out any goals of influence, writing is an amazing process for research and idea formation in itself. Cybershow has become a yardstick of how prescient our coverage is and a growing catalogue of pieces that trace the trajectory of tech in the past few years.
I think it takes a couple of years and more than a hundred or so pieces for that value to come into view. So if you just started blogging/podcasting, give it time.