Daily Posts Experiment pt. 2

There was something different about the way I moved in the world when I did my 30-day Writing Challenge in January 2023.

I felt like I was building a lot of momentum for myself back then.

I still feel great about where I’m at now. I’ve focused on growing my technical skills this past year, I have an amazing network of friends across the world, and generally feel more confident.

It’s starting to feel like I’m plateauing a bit though.

One thing that I’ve always wanted to work on is just being more comfortable posting things online and being in public.

I pretty much stream-of-conscious journal every day, and think I come up with interesting ideas that are worth sharing. But it just doesn’t feel like X is the medium to post reflective thougths any more.

It’s just too brutal to post something that you think is worthy, just for it not to get picked up by the algorithm’s viral-hungry interest graph. Or for your post to not be tuned with the right amount of nuance that you might save for a long-form post.

I tried to resolve this last fall by building my own CMS blog for my personal website and writing on there, but that lead to me just worrying about maintaining the tech instead of actually writing (lol), and I never actually promoted it.

I might go back to trying that later, but for now we’re out here exploring this medium again to kick some wheels back on the habit of writing online.

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In January 2023, I took all my 30-day writing posts down because I felt subconscious about how my somewhat-rebellious ideas would be received by new clients that I was taking on, or how other colleagues might feel about my writing.

In retrospect, I think that it’s a real shame that I cared so much, since putting out some of those pieces brought me to life and gave me energy, and most people that I work with probably don’t really care about what I write online any way.

It’s oddly load-bearing to have an online presence and be in the workplace, even if you’re just a consultant. Having even a slight online presence and posting my real thoughts makes me feel like I’m a walking destabilizing force for people around me, even if no one is really even paying attention or even if my posts are not even that spicy.

I don’t think there’s any way to get over this than to just keep posting through it, or to fold.

I’m taking a pause on client work for at least a couple months, and looking to build my own thing again as I prepare to go to Network School v2.

There’s lots to catch up on since I’ve last been online, and a lot that I want to write about.

So I’m glad to be back! We’ll try not to take down posts this time.