This is a rough draft from September 2018, published as-is. Brackets indicate notes-to-self I never got around to filling in. Make of that what you will.

Late is better than never

Right now we’re more than two thirds of the way through the year, and I’ve only posted one blog post. My new year’s resolutions [insert link here] called for about one post per month. While it’s still possible to hit that goal by the end of the year, the spirit of the goal was to create a writing habit, not simply commit 12 posts to gitHub by the end of 2018. ​ Lately I’ve been thinking more about writing. In June I saw a post (likely via HackerNews [check]) about an awesome website called writingstreak.io, a site that measures writing productivity and incentivizes you to keep going. As they say, the first draft is the hardest, and you’re encouraged to keep writing to hit your goal. Furthermore, productivity is tracked over time (much like other quantified self analytics such as for fitness) including with a visualization that should be familiar to anyone who uses gitHub [show what the measure looks like]. ​ While I failed to initiate a habit in June, I’m going to make a good-faith effort now. Why now? What changed? ​ The Existentialist Cafe et al ​ I have just finished reading The Existentialist Cafe, by Sarah Bakewell [insert amazon link here]. This fantastic book covers a variety of important personal and intellectual milestones in the lives of existentialist philosophers and in the history of existential thought. There are several descriptions of writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir that depict them as prolific writers with excellent habits. Though at times in the 50’s Sartre struggled with over-production under the influence of recreational drug use and not bothering to edit before publishing, the habit of writing consistently is one worth examining. ​ As a result of reading The Existentialist Cafe, I think it would be useful to spend more of my time writing down my thoughts instead of merely thinking them or passively receiving the ideas of others via reading or conversation. I think it will make me a better writer. I think it will make me a better thinker. I think it will help reinforce that I have broken my self-imposed shackles of imposter syndrome, something that has affected my work and influence in the past. I am writing mostly for myself but the act of publishing my writing forces me to think critically and synthesize in such a way that it could be valuable for others as well. The world doesn’t need another privileged straight white male to share others’ attention, but by smithing these words, I would like to think that I am increasing the pie as opposed to taking some away from others. It would be with incredible narcissism to assert that these words are disproportionately worthy of others’ attention. ​ Writing harder better faster stronger ​ I reference “harder better faster stronger” [link to daft punk] a lot when I talk about learning and self-improvement. It’s an incredibly succinct way of describing it. So I’m writing some words on this page. Blah blah blah. I’m not just word-vomiting for the sake of hitting a particular word count, nor am I striving to make things up as they come to mind as a way of passing the time or hitting a certain limit (e.g. writing for 30 minutes). I want to come up with a plan for improving my writing. To paraphrase Newton, I will only have seen so far by standing on the shoulders of giants. To that effect, I must study writing. I read a lot so I have a plethora of resources from which to draw, however, I don’t think that is sufficient here. I need to study material specific to writing to hone my craft. ​ Writing ideas:

1. great american novel
2. experimental writing
3. short stories
4. nonfiction
5. technical articles (blog post on cool new machine learning framework)
6. technical book (e.g., a how-to guide to topological data analysis)
7. scientific articles (e.g., to submit to a computer science conference such as NIPS)
8. Philosophy
9. Memoir
10. News articles
11. Summaries of technical writing or scientific writing
12. Textbook ​ Obviously, there are some order-of-magnitude differences between the level of effort and expertise needed to embark and complete any of the aforementioned kinds of writing. ​ What do I need to do to learn about these kinds of writing? ​
13. Read (a sampling of the best) examples.
14. Read howtos, especially best of breed.
15. Try to create my own examples.
16. Research the tools that are used by the best writers in each category (e.g. LaTeX for scientific writing)
17. Find a system that works (e.g. the Seinfeld productivity rule)
18. Learn about what it means to publish in each of them. What does success look like? How does publishing work? ​ What do I hope to get out of all of this? ​ Not sure yet. I want to share the journey so that I can come back to reference it and so that I can continue to develop my thoughts on the matter. ​ Riches? Fame? Enlightenment? Babes? Personal growth and fulfillment? Scratching the itch of my relentless intellectual curiousity. Developing as a thinker. Getting a byline in the New York Times. Creating a bestseller. Writing something that will keep my name and my ideas alive long after I am gone. Death — is that something that concerns me? Does it bother me enough to think about writing as a means of attempting to achieve my own immortality? What kind of ego must one have to think that such an event has a high-enough probability to succeed? ​ Another aspect of this is merely getting better at creating habits. Writing is a habit that will serve me throughout my life and I’m sure it could in ways I can’t even think of right now. Personally, professionally… who knows! I want to become a better communicator. I want to become a leader in the workplace and via volunteering at nonprofits. I want to share the priveleged experiences I’ve had to inspire myself and others. I want to share my enthusiasm and love for life with everyone. I want to process feelings in a healthy way. I want to transcend my humanity. ​ Now I’m running out of steam, and it’s time to end.