I want to get better at communicating ideas in writing. I decided to concretely ramp up on this by setting a challenge of writing 100 blog posts, of which this is one.
I’ve always felt myself drawn in many directions at once and been interested in many things. Over the course of 100 posts (and more!), I want to write about things I find interesting, things that have grabbed my attention, and things that have been on my mind. Patterns will emerge. The general noise and chaos of being caught up a ton of different things will dissipate. I want to have posts that serve as stable artifacts, things that I can point to and say: This is what I think about that. I want posts that serve as ephemeral signposts: I used to think this, but you can see my unsureness, and my thoughts have evolved since then. I want to see what I come back to over and over again.
Why write in public?
This is part of the journey for me. I hope that writing in public will help me find others on the same journey, with similar interests and directionality. Writing in public will help me be prolific, to look back and see how silly some of my earlier writing or thinking was. To take things a little less seriously. To favor publishing over polishing, at least at this stage in the process.
Some of my role models and inspiration in the space are people like Gordon Brander and Applied Divinity Studies. These are people with incredibly well-researched and well-reasoned posts, carefully crafted delivering the cutting edge of their well-developed thinking in a space. I aspire to write like these people. This essay encourages daily writing practice. This is part of the work, for me. Michael Ashcroft writing expresses vulnerability in public, as a means of self-exploration and development as well as a means of finding the others.
You view it as a dirty tap. When you switch the dirty tap on, it’s going to flow out with shit water, but after a substantial amount of time you’ll get clean water flowing. The more and more you write, the more and more you experience, and you start getting better and better and better. Now and then you’ll still have a shit song, but that’s alright because you got it out of you and that’s alright. Be nice to people.
Ed Sheeran
I’m in the dirty tap phase, and that’s OK.
Viraj's Notebook 