Prologue
It’s been some six years — somewhere around my university graduation — since I last wrote something even remotely resembling an essay. Not that I don’t like the process of writing, I just always seem to lack an occasion, or any interesting topic to write about. It usually feels like anything worth writing about has been already thouroughly discussed in thousands of books, blog posts, journal articles, and podcasts, by people who are much more intelligent, experienced, and insightful than me.
So why did I open my text editor to type this post after such a long break? Is it really worth my time to write something inherently derivative, and is it worth your time to read it? To be frank with you, I don’t know. But let me show you some mental traps that I encountered when considering writing again, and the way I reasoned myself out of them.
Mental traps of writing
Trap #1: nothing is new under the sun
Yeah, some of the thoughts that I’m going to share have been already expressed by a thousand people on the Internet, a bunch of contemporary writers before them, some classical-era philosopers before, et cetera, et cetera — up to some random neandhertal in a fire-lit cave. Does it really mean that you shouldn’t elaborate on any of them, since everything there was to say has already been told countless times?
Of course it doesn’t, and the reason for that lies in the nature of thought itself. An idea is more just a mere datapoint that exists in pure vacuum. Any idea exists within a context that is capable of shaping and transforming it. Even an exact same sentence, written by two different people in two different texts, might make a reader think different thoughts and feel different feelings. So while you’re most likely not the first ever person to think of something (you still might be though!), chances are that a lot of people would still find your ideas insightful.
Trap #2: looking for a niche
This one is a bit more controversial than the previous, but hear me out: you don’t really need to know your target audience, nor do you need to shape your texts in any specific way. Yes, if you consider your blog a commercial product, all the market economy laws apply to it: in order to be successful, it has to close some demand deficit, ideally a large one.
But is it a commercial product though? In my opinion, there are plenty of better ways to make money than writing texts on the Internet, especially in the era of LLMs, when content has become dirt-cheap.
A better definition of success is to connect with like-minded people, even if that’s going to be just one person that enjoys reading about your cookie baking (or, in my case, keyboard typing and ranting) hobby. Having all the modern ways of communication, we actually live in quite an isolated society, and making new meaningful connections might become one of the best things for your wellbeing. Along with actually going for walks and doing sports, so for the love of god, please go touch some grass.
Trap #3: lack of depth™
I’d really love my posts to be deep™ and insightful. But let’s be fair: depth™ is rarely a necessity when it comes to blogging. We the modern people got our attention spans ruined by Twitter and TikTok, and any piece of content that takes more than fifteen seconds to consume will likely be just skimmed over or, worst case, skipped altogether. This paragraph, for example, is quite far in the text, and will most likely be disregarded in favor of another post or a session of Subway Surfers.
So while it may seem tempting to create something monumental and deep™, maybe a blog post is not the best format for such ventures. Better render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and save that kind of content for my monographs and memoirs. Hopefully these will be written by other people, since my attention span is also shit.
Epilogue
Starting something new is always scary, but the worst thing one could do is to get trapped in their own preconceptions and fail before even starting. As a pathological overthinker, I will try my best not to get caught by these dark waters and deliver the most interesting stuff I can, ideally having some fun in the process. Stay tuned!