Occasionally some gems show up in hacker news, ones that make you want to read it more than once. Today I found this one. It was nice to see a stranger on the Internet who things the same way as you do. The reason I write is for me, it's something I like to do and helps me think through my thoughts clearly. I rarely come back and read anything, but that was never the point of writing in the first place. There are times when I'll have an idea in my head which has completely transformed by the end of the article. Other times insights show up as I'm writing. These are not rare occurrences either, this happens a lot of the time.
It also has another benefit. A lot of the times when I sit down to write I tell myself, there is nothing to write about. All it takes is sitting down on the chair and to start typing. I'll probably delete everything but after the first or second deletion I know what I want to write about. It's a good practice, that shows me that there is always something that can be done. Just show up.
Why do I write?
It started out as a practice in building a habit. I also wanted to test the idea of doing the smallest thing possible and seeing how effective it would be. Turns out, pretty effective. This post would be my 120th post (give or take a few) since I started this experiment about four months ago. Since then it's just become a form of meditation of ideas. My mind is quite erratic and I get distracted quite often, so this helps me for a short period in my day to think things through with a singular focus.
Does writing everyday have benefits?
For me, it's a resounding yes. I do enjoy practicing something over long periods of time. Mostly out of curiosity to see how good I can get. To find out, what's the upper limit for a regular Jim like me. I've done it with weightlifting, programming and writing. It's never finished, which is my other favorite thing about this. There always is something to get better at. After all I do need something to fill my time while I'm on this rock. So why not?
At the same time, I enjoy practicing for it's own sake. Don't really care about competing. Probably because I sucked as a competitive swimmer when I was young. Mostly because, it takes me a lot longer to get good at stuff, because I'm adamant of doing things my way. Even if they are not ideal, because I like the autonomy and the process of dicovery.