Claude Monet, Shadows on the Sea. The Cliffs at Pourville, 1882
Exactly a year ago I started blogging everyday.
These blogs are mostly good ideas that I discover online that I want to compartmentalize and steal for myself, and collect them here in my own corner of the internet so I can revisit them from time to time.
As for my reflective and introspective writings, they're an attempt to document my life and for making sense of my thoughts.
“Write hard and clear about what hurts. ― Ernest Hemingway
Reading back my journal entries in this blog is almost like time travelling. I'm visiting different versions of my past selves, unpacking and resurfacing all their thoughts, ambitions, sufferings, fears, anxiety, and emotions.
Some I've conquered, some I still harbor, but it's comforting to see growth and change happen. I'm optimistic for April 16, 2025: the kind of person I'll become and the people that will be in my life in SF.
Since it's been a year, I decided to distill some thoughts about my motivations for writing this blog below:
- To think clearly and communicate better
- To understand myself better
- To learn and understand things better (Feynman technique)
- To force myself to learn and research about a topic
- To curate and resurface good ideas
- To create listicles for myself and others
- Satisfy mimetic desire of other people having their own blogs and writings
- To improve the craft of writing well and developing my own style
- To share life updates and ideas to friends
- Commit to the daily habit of writing
- So I can go to bed in peace (so I don’t break the streak)
- To have an online presence
- To find other people who think like me
- To get better at Next.js and Tailwind CSS (better at promoting AI at least)
- To increase my surface area of luck
- An excuse to curate and discover good art
- An attempt to generate new ideas from existing ones
- To filter and extract out advice and insights from the books I read
- To invite other people to reach out
I've also collected a few resources for people to get started.
Why write
- Writing – Jacky Zhao
- why i write - by Isabel - Mind Mine
- Why I Write | The Orwell Foundation
- The Paris Review - Why Write?
- Why write at all? – Jesse
- Why Write – Gian
- Why Bother Writing an Essay – Jordan Peterson
- Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
how to write
- Why and how to write things on the Internet | benkuhn.net
- The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online - David Perell
- how to write on the internet (& keep doing it)
- Nonfiction Writing Advice | Slate Star Codex
- Writing Well Handbook by Julian Shapiro
- Notes on writing well – Michael Nielsen