30 Posts In 30 Days

I am posting a commitment to write 30 blog posts over the next 30 days. I'm not putting any constraints on what to put in a post. The point is to write.

Because I want to be a writer. I want to write books. I want to exercise the full potential of my words to delight people as so many of my idols have done. A few months ago I listened to Scott Alexander's advice about blogging and he talked about some things that have echoed in my head since.

1. He talks to lots of people that don't think they have ideas for what to post, but he thinks they have a lot to say. Their problem is the part of the brain that generates conversation topics won't fuel the part that comes up with blog ideas.
2. The other big barrier is courage. There were many ideas he almost didn't post. He talks to people who won't post despite having 20 ideas.
3. It takes a long time writing in obscurity before finding an audience. He was on Livejournal since 2006 but didn't really have an independent blog with an independent audience until SlateStarCodex in 2012. Even then it took a long time to build the audience.
4. The number one predictor of whether a blogger will be good is if they can post every day. Even if they start as a bad writer, they learn quickly by posting every day.

I've tried to get started blogging before. I've had a personal website in one form or another since high school, but I've never done anything really cool with it. When I was unemployed for a few months in 2019, I started a blog called Dallas Coders about programming and things I had learned at my first job, but I didn't stick with it for very long. Still, it was an attempt. Then in 2023, I signed up for Daily Page, a service that emails daily writing prompts and appears to be nonfunctional now. I stuck with that for a few months writing a couple times per week.

Last September I started an Twitter account with the goal of reducing the friction to writing down my thoughts. My goal was to increase my courage and reduce my perfectionism so I could post more often. I think the experiment has been a success and I feel like the words flow a lot easier than they used to. The other part of the experiment was to try embracing all my interests at once: tech, politics, furries, rationalism, etc. and show myself that some people would find my crazy self appealing. One day I hope to be comfortable doing all that under my real name.

But I am now feeling the desire to write longer form content and X doesn't do it. Writing and reading long-form on X is a sad experience and no one does it. The immediate metrics also kill your motivation. I'm not going to pour my heart out there for 50 views and 2 likes. It crushes the motivation. The site is also ugly. At least if I post here I can make it look nice.

I chose that number by rounding up the widely echoed advice that it takes 21 days to form a habit. I was curious enough to look it up and it's not true. However, a month seemed like a solid approachable goal.