I write so people can avoid my mistakes.
So that the mistakes I made, someone may learn from, and live a richer (in Thoreau’s sense, not financially), more fulfilled and successful life than I was ever able to.
I write to ensure that all my mental capacities and labor do not go in vain, that they not fall dead upon the silence and heat death of the universe.
Shit, if I did all this work in my head, someone’s gotta use it. If I die and not a single soul was able to gain something from all this work and suffering that I did, what’s the point? I always wish that the smart people I look up to would’ve written down and recorded their mental progress, so that I could learn to think more like them. This was rarely ever the case. I’m always trying to become who exactly I needed. I write in hopes that my stupid thoughts and ideas and mistakes can help just a single soul.
I write to share my humanity and imperfection.
We all have our thoughts. We all have our lives. Sometimes it’s comforting to share in that with another person. There’s a lot to gain from opening up to other perspectives, and there is just as much to gain from absorbing humanities not your own. Identifying with another soul will make you feel less lonely. Noticing someone else’s mistakes will make you feel less uniquely flawed. Reading your struggles in someone else’s words makes your own a little less lonely. Life’s best lived as a shared experience with your fellow brothers and sisters, and I want to make it feel as such.
I write so that I can better study how my brain works.
I’ve found that primarily studying the system then acting is much more effective than primarily acting, then studying the system for adjustments. It’s that idea of fundamentals again…
“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”
- Albert Einstein
I’ve been writing a post on this idea of problem/system first thinking for so long… who knows what decade I’ll finally publish that.
I write to find people like me.
If I say something that makes someone think, “oh that’s interesting” or “oh he thinks like me”, they might be inclined to email me.
It’s a lonely world out there fellas, it’s a lot less lonely with friends. 🌸
I write because I think better on paper
Man… if I tried to synthesize all these thoughts just within my tiny peanut brain… good luck, Charlie. The brain is a terrible place to hold things. But it’s really really good at making creative and novel leaps. So I write all my thoughts down, fleshing out in fine detail the vague clouds in my brain, clearing my head of the baggage of having to remember the exact wording of some fundamental ideas, and then I let my mind play at the branches.
And that is why… you should too :-)