You should write more


🔗 a linked post to lcamtuf.substack.com » — originally shared here on

If you’re a painter, you’re still allowed to paint landscapes. Singers are still allowed to sing about love. And heck — I’m betting the first time your critic learned about this particular topic, he wasn’t standing atop Mount Sinai. Knowledge transfer is a vital human activity, and it’s all about synthesizing, refining, and incrementally expanding on what’s been said before.

Here’s a short list of posts I’ve been wanting to write but have chickened out every time I start a draft:

  • How I’ve organized my Plex music library
  • How to pick the perfect karaoke song
  • Ways you can move out of the corporate world and into the startup world
  • Why I stopped reading the news and quit social media
  • How to avoid clickbait articles

Maybe I should force myself to write one of these and publish it with little self-editing.

I made a concerted effort to write more this year. I’ve journaled roughly 98% of the days this year, and I’ve published something on this blog just as much. I even started a newsletter.

I’ve learned a lot about myself thanks to all of this writing. I didn’t realize how much a daily blogging challenge would reveal about my musical tastes. I wouldn’t have been able to identify my feelings without yelling at a journal until my voice became hoarse.

Best of all, writing is proving to be an effective way for me to share what I’ve learned with others. Feeling useful helps beat back the depression demons.

I encourage anyone reading this to write down whatever you’ve been interested in lately and post it somewhere. Share it with me so I can learn with you!

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