Writing

Let’s try something new.

This section - dailies - is a space for me to write - try and guess - daily.

Something I’ve learned about my working style is that I have difficulty starting and difficulty finishing.

Choosing a task and choosing to get started is difficult. I have a tendency to overthink, overanalyze, and overproject. I spent a large part of my childhood day dreaming and I think that behavior has carried over in a matured form as an adult. It’s procrastination, of a sort, but it’s also fantasizing about the work and a disorder-level compulsion to make the final output perfect.

I love the middle stage of working on a task. Locking in, hyperfocusing, figuring out, the rush of discovery and understanding.

Finishing is also difficult. That stage where the problem has been explored and the solution has been understood and now it’s just crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. Next up will be the time to evaluate (gasp). Time to get into the details and make sure it’s all just right. Finishing is torture.

In many ways, my Year of Creation is an attempt to unlearn and grow past some of these compulsions, habits, disorders. To embrace who I am and what I’ve accomplished but also grow past and continue my evolution from being a solver to a maker. And this website has been a perfect memorial to what is wrong with me: hyperfocusing on the creation of a digital property which will be my little corner of the internet, a place built not with the principle not of reach nor validation as king but rather of craft and expression. The dingy little soba shop in a lost Tokyo back alley, with 4 empty seats and an old man waiting behind the counter, not the Michelin Bib Gourmant listed hawker stall in a Singapore mall.

And look how I have utterly failed in this dream! After days spent perusing, curating and building my own site style, setting up the frame and choosing the infrastructure and hosting. How proud was I of this empty shell of a property! What beautiful colors and font sizing I chose! I made nothing for it at all, forbid ugly content be presented on such a precious and perfect property! Huzzah!

It’s time to set this right.

If you are reading this, you’re either me in the future or a lost voyeur who took a wrong button click some time ago. Either are welcome.

If you are me: I had a moment of inspiration for a daily journal, and in the span of 20 minutes following that inspiration I had 3 more writing topics jotted down in my Apple notes. I want to keep that creativity and dopamine filled creative reinforcement going. Conversely, I absolutely hated writing this first post. What to write about! I guess I will write about writing dailies. But wait! Anyone who discovered dailies for the first time would be likely to scroll to the bottom and choose the first post. Horror! That they will be reading this self-absorbed meta filth. A daily post writing about the practice of writing daily. And I had nothing to say! Look at this rambling thought loose string up above! Blegh.

If you’re a lost voyeur: I’m not sure how you found my little street stall. It’s not on any travel guides and doesn’t have any street signage of note. I can’t think of a good reason for you to be here. This section of dailies will give you nothing. I expect many of these dailies to be self-absorbed and irrelevant to any self-respecting individual with any concerns that may have value. Some will be about philosophy, technology, business, economics, intelligence, humanity. Some of these dailies may grow to become fully fledged essays hosted on thoughts. Some of the dailies may be rewrite or edits to the thoughts essays. And many dailies will be three sentences of emotive frustration - “I don’t want to write today” - “I have no ideas.” That’s ok. In fact, I would be delighted if this were the outcome of my dingy property’s haphazardly drawn up shop sections.

stuff and thoughts will be curated, refined, evolve, be rewritten, grow, prune, edited, thoughtful.

dailies will be messy, process, thought fragments, both germinating seeds and also sprouts undergoing regular grooming.

May it be so.