[25/30] Showing Up
It’s day 25 of my 30-day experiment to write every day.
No one’s really reading these (how could they, it’s every day), but I’m enjoying the process more than I expected. I think there are three reasons for that.
First, it feels liberating to write without constraints. My computational design newsletter has a clear theme, so people know what to expect which is the point. But it also means I can’t just write what I want all the time. Readers expect computational design, writing about trauma or some other thought will just confuse them. Here, I can go anywhere.
Second, showing up every day feels incredible. I’ve learnt that I have more thoughts worth expressing than I thought. Some long, some incomplete and some misunderstood. Daily writing gives me a time and a place to explore them. Even if it's only for a short while. The only problem with writing daily is that some ideas deserve more time (like unpacking how childhood fears still affect me today), but without a forcing function like this experiment, I’d probably never hit publish. This experiment has forced me to dedicate time to exploring my thoughts regardless of the outcome which I think is equally as important as everything else.
Third, writing like this feels honest. With themed writing, I still aim for authenticity, but the tone always shifts to fit the topic and persona. Like with computational design, I always aim for a more "senior consulting" kind of tone whereas here, I can joke around one day, be super somber another or just be truly serious. Here, I get to bring more of me.
As I hit the final days of this experiment, I’m wondering how to carry more of that honesty into other parts of my work. I’m not about to drop trauma essays into my computational design newsletter, but maybe there’s another way.
One thought I am playing around are short videos where I just talk to the camera. That feels like a step toward showing up as my whole self while still keeping on topic.