Fuck it, let's go

Writing is hard. This is not newsworthy in and of itself, but it’s something I want to acknowledge and sit with: just putting words on the page, either publicly or privately, is real work.

I’ve long been a believer in the philosophy that writing = thinking, but I’ve been haphazard in my implementation of the practice in my own life. I think everywhere, sure—walking, cycling, driving, doing dishes, whatever—but my clearest thinking surely comes out on the page. One listen to one of my on-the-go voice memo journals should tell you all you need to know about the scattered nature of my moderately ADHD, hilariously generalist brain (thank you David Epstein for making me feel better about my spray-can curiosity in virtually everything, jack of all trades, master of none, yada yada).

But when I sit down to write, what to write about? I have a litany of topic ideas a mile long, but they each seem to crave perfection. Writing privately allows for a lot of rough edges. Typos, half-finished thoughts, incongruent logic. Writing publicly, e.g. here, seems to call for a much more polished product. Or at least I tell myself that.

But what if it doesn’t? After all, while I would love to have folks reading this site, I don’t think I have too many people refreshing my blog first thing in the morning—or literally ever. There’s nothing to read, why would they?! So we come to a classic chicken-and-egg problem, hilariously false and entirely perceived: I want to write more. But I’m afraid to write more because I’m afraid of being wrong, judged, or publishing mediocre content. And I’m afraid to write because I’m not practiced in writing—and I’m not practiced because I don’t write more. But the reality is that no one is reading anyway, so my fears are completely unfounded and by the time I have people reading—if ever—maybe the work will show itself to have been vastly improved.

Maybe there’s no shame in sharing the journey.

It’s easy to list the cons of writing online, especially in the year of our lord 2026. In ten years someone will look at a post—maybe this one!—and say that was pretty dumb. Or one of my posts has a hilariously bad take that ages poorly. Or some potential future client reads a post and decides as a result that I’m not a guy they want to work with.

Pros feel a lot harder. But are they? It’s a healthy practice, writing. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be public. And there’s a lot of vulnerability in it. But also serendipity that gets created. A lot of good things that could happen might never happen if no one knows what you are thinking or working on. That alone is probably worth mashing “publish”, right? Putting things on the page means I’m putting myself out there, shipping stuff. That feels good even if it’s scary. Putting my ideas on metaphorical paper about who I am, how I work, what I think should exist in the world, and what I’m building in it.

So which is more real? Having written a few stream-of-consciousness paragraphs this morning, it feels silly to point to the cons and shut it down just for that. I’ve been called worse. I’m sure I’ve been turned down for more interesting reasons. And frankly, having people disagree with me is a more interesting way to grow and learn than sitting here solo at my desk and talking myself in circles.

I saw this post from Simon Willison this morning about writing stuff before you feel like it’s ready. Just being okay with putting out a shitty first draft (I’m pretty sure every writer I’ve ever heard on a podcast has issued some form of this advice).

My number one tip for blogging is to lower your standards! Aim to hit publish while you are still actively unhappy with what you have written, because the only alternative is a huge folder full of drafts and never publishing anything at all.

Nobody will ever know how perfect the thing you intended to write would have been. The flaws you see in your writing are invisible to everyone else.

I’m not sure why this morning that advice has finally settled in, but I’m happy to feel it finally land. In my journal this morning I wrote, “What would it be like if I published one post every day of the week sometime? Just as an experiment? What if I did that this week? What if I had a little more ‘fuck it, let’s go’ energy in my life?”

Well, why not? I’ve been pushing myself to ship more, write more. This would probably feel good in a world where I spend a lot of solo time at my desk. Where my work is almost entirely self-driven, fighting to harness the motivation within me every day. No question, I have a lot going on! And there’s a lot to be excited about and proud of! But most of it exists in the space between my ears, with a small group of close friends, and in thousands of notes, scribbles, artifacts, and chats on my computer.

Fuck it, let’s go.