I Dont Think I Like Writing

I don't think I like writing. There are two different meanings to that title. The boring meaning is that the process of writing isn't enjoyable to me. My evidence for that fact is that I started this “blog” over two years ago, and I'm currently writing the third total post. I built pagination into the backend, and after more than two years, I'm not even a third of the way to needing to use it.

Writing the code for the blog took a lot of effort, but it was also fun. It was work that I enjoyed doing, so I was happy to spend nights and weekends working on it. I assumed writing the content of the blog would be the same. So far, that hasn't been the case.

It's not that I don't have ideas. Since building the blog, I've written down any ideas I have that I could turn into blog posts (though not necessarily good posts). That list has more than 25 entries now. It's just that the process of turning those ideas into a ~1000 word essay is a pain. It seems like homework, not recreation.

Like most people, I have an easy time working on things I like. When I wanted to get in shape, I didn't force myself to run or lift weights, I bought a dance pad and got exercise doing something I enjoy. In my youth, I was pretty good at the piano which I liked, but did pretty bad in band class when I tried to play a wind instrument that I disliked. After spending years making a game, my mom asked me how much money I made per hour. The number was probably less than a quarter an hour, but I didn't see it like that at all. To me, I entertained myself for a thousand hours or so, and on top of that, a few other people liked what I did and paid me money for it.

"I like doing things I enjoy" is hardly an original idea, but I think there's a distinction between working hard to create something, and pure recreation. It's a bit of a tangent, but Infinite Scroll explains it better than I can in the article On Consumption vs Production. Creating something that is nominally for other people is very healthy for yourself, even if you enjoyed doing it.

Back on topic: things I don't like. A lot of research has been done on musical expertise. Consistently, deliberate practice is found to be the most important factor in musical ability. Innate skill is important too, but the degree to which it is important is disputed. For a while, there was a theory that the truly great musicians must enjoy deliberate practice. How else could they stand to do it for dozens of thousands of hours? Later research has shown that this is untrue. No one likes practice, but some people do it a lot more than others. Maybe I have to think of writing in the same way. It's not enjoyable. It's not recreation. It’s practice, and it's worth doing despite all that.

All of that is a long winded way of saying that I'm going to try to write on this blog more. Ideally, I will turn it into a repository of (hopefully) interesting ideas. If I fail though, at least it will be funny to see two “I'm going to write more” articles back to back, followed by an extended silence. To avoid this blog being too much “welcome to my blog!” with no actual substance, I included a second meaning in the title.

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The other meaning of the title is that I don't think I like writing. A lot of people seem very confident right away about their opinions, and I really can’t relate.

When I try a new drink, my friends and family will ask “Well? What do you think?” after the first sip. I don't know! I've only had one sip! It's not nearly enough exposure to form a real opinion. Many drinks leave a good first impression, but leave a terrible aftertaste, and others have a strange initial taste that is quickly acquired.

In the same way, I've only written three blog posts. It's been hard to motivate myself to write them, but maybe that's just a bad first impression. Even after all that whinging in the first section about how hard it is to write amateur blog posts, it will turn out to be like coffee, black licorice, or beer: gross at first, but very good once you get used to it.

I'm not super well versed in epistemology, but that skeptical stance is the one I take towards most things. “It left a first impression, but I don't really know enough to make a strong opinion.” Economic policy? Political philosophy? Ethical framework? I don't know. It's all very complicated! Some of these options seem more reasonable than others, but I really don't know enough to have more than a first impression.

There's an old story about Pyrrho, the ancient philosopher, who believed true knowledge was impossible. In this story, Pyrrho walks into the middle of the street, right as a horse was charging down it. His student frantically dove to push his teacher out of danger, then asked what he was thinking. Pyrrho just said “well, it looked like there was a horse about to run me over, but I didn't know for sure. Maybe my senses were deceiving me, and there was no horse at all. We just can't say for sure.” Regardless of if that really happened or not, it makes me want to clarify that having a first impression is different from having absolutely no information at all. I don't have 100% certainty on anything, but at the end of the day I still need to make decisions to live my life; and some first impressions are a lot worse than others.

Even skepticism has only left a good impression. A hard-line skeptic would say that true certainty is impossible; all we have is different degrees of confidence. That makes sense to me intuitively, but I have a hard time asserting it as definitely true. Maybe there is some way to be absolutely certain, and I just haven't figured it out.

Weasel words are kind of annoying. “I think”, “it might be”, “some have said”, “I could be wrong, but…” just say what you want to say. I'm reminded of this podcast where Tom Scott gives a dozen qualifications before describing his spooky paranormal experience. It's for that reason that I'll try not to infect the future posts of this blog (assuming there are any) with endless “I think, probably”s and “we can't know for sure, but it seems like”s. If I mean “it seems like micro plastics in our blood stream is unhealthy, but we don't have conclusive proof either way”, I'll just write “microplastics are unhealthy”. This post here is my disclaimer that I'm not sure, and if I actually write out “we don't know for sure, but universal basic income seems like a good idea ” that means I'm extra unsure; barely more confident than a coin flip.

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I'm excited to write more. Hopefully I actually do it. That list of potential blog posts has gotten long, the topics are very scattered though, so don't expect any sort of consistency. Not in update schedule, not in subject matter.