On writing

I have stopped blogging on work topics for at least a decade.

Blogging has been a great way for me to explore ideas, to articulate my own position on various topics. It served as a tool as well as the medium for self-expression.

And yet I have stopped, shortly after I started consulting. That was puzzling, since I still cared about the field, and I still enjoyed reading others’ writing.

At first I thought that writing for consulting (e.g. proposals or design documents) is where this energy went.

But after some reflection, I think the best explanation I could come up with was the combination of the “curse of knowledge” together with the imposter syndrome. I think it went something like, “if I know this, surely others know this as well, so why would I bother explaining it to them?!” So whenever I would learn something, I would immediately consider it trivial, basic knowledge shared by everyone. And to some extent, I did not want to be the last one to the party, admitting I have not learned it until now.

Of course, a lot of it comes from paying too much attention to what I think others might think—the din of mental chatter that is so self-defeating.

Looking further back, I realize how much energy I spent putting up a front for others, pretending to know more than I did, pretending that the topic at hand was old news to me. I am sure that some of it comes from being a young immigrant and trying to fit in.

And yet, I remember very well how I learned that I could say, “I do not know” early in my professional career. It felt liberating. I do have to admit that it is still not entirely a second nature, and at times it is a deliberate effort to say, “I do not know.”

I would like to restart this writing outlet, knowing how much it gives me.

I know that a lot of the topics I touch on here are fields with depth and scholarship, complete with books, papers, and other massive presence I am unaware of. And that is OK. I will do research where I can, and in most cases I will return to the disclaimer that this is my lived experience and this is where I am at now.

There is also a bias for… not action, but perhaps expression? I notice that my first impulse is to hesitate to put any opinion forward simply because I have not done the exhaustive research. As it turns out, a lot of the time the stuff I come up with (or people around me for that matter) is good enough, and there is no need for a week-long book report exercise.

And of course, the tone matters. I want to avoid the didactic stance, I do want to come across as condescending. I want to catch and preserve the spirit of curiosity and wonder and be able to get it across.

I would like to be both vulnerable and bold when it comes to showing my own learning and thought process. After all, I am a work in progress, and I would like to embrace it.