Why do I write online?

I don’t know why yet and it’s okay!

Hi friends! Hope you are having a good day or night wherever you are.

Last week, I passed 1000 subscribers on Substack 🤯

There are now more than 1000 of you supporting me and my little corner on the Internet. This blog was randomly started back in June of this year with a 30-day blogging challenge to combat my boredom and disappointment of applying to Edtech companies in the US and not getting any interviews. Now, it’s a space where I share my journey of becoming - becoming my own manager and first-time founder:)

As I hit this milestone, I want to reflect on a few learnings I have after nearly four months of writing online semi-consistently.

I am really scared by the number of subscribers

As my blog grows, I catch myself feeling more scared of creating online, of clicking the send button to my readers, and of freely expressing myself. Do I now need to write what my audience wants? Does the number of likes and comments on certain posts reflect my quality of writing? If I promise my readers that I write about Edtech, do I need to commit to that?

All these questions start growing on me as I finish up the last sentences of my recent blogs and feel nervous and scared to publish.

Should I just write for myself and not send emails to my readers then? Maybe after all I am not a public person. Maybe after all I love staying in the bush.

But there is more…

I am confused about why I am writing online

I ask myself: “Why do I write online?”

• Am I driving sales for our business? Not really, that’s my co-founder’s blog.

• Am I providing information on Edtech for the general audience? Not exactly, the information I provide is quite US-centric.

• Am I helping my team understand more about our product? Unfortunately, I have not done so very well as I get so caught up in execution.

• Am I attracting investors or partners for our business? Not that I’ve seen.

So why exactly am I writing online? Who am I helping? Am I just writing for myself?

The more that I think about these questions, the more I doubt myself and hesitate to write.

But,

I believe I don’t have to figure out why I am writing online right away.

As a beginner like me, I know the only way to improve my thinking and my writing in the long run is to just keep writing.

As Paul Graham says in his blog “Putting Ideas Into Words”,

Writing about something, even something you know well, usually shows you that you didn’t know it as well as you thought. Putting ideas into words is a severe test. Ideas can feel complete. It’s only when you try to put them into words that you discover they are not.

Before figuring out who I am writing to and what I am writing about, I need to keep practicing the craft of putting ideas into words first, even incomplete ideas.

Thus …

I will reshape my relationship with online writing

Instead of trying to grow an audience online, I want to think of online writing as a way to summon a new culture. I want to write to find my people, my community, those with similar interests, fears, or wonders, and those who are weird like me.

In one of his posts, Henrik Karlsson describes a blog as a search query.

You write to find your tribe. You write so they will know what kind of fascinating things they should route in your inbox.

I want to use my writing to connect with others who are also imperfect, unstructured, and complex in their thinking. I want to make it okay and normal to share the messiness of growth and learning publicly.

My goal is to cultivate a culture of lifelong learning where people feel safe to throw out incomplete ideas, half-baked thoughts, and works in progress. A culture where the focus is on the process, not the perfection.

I know there are others like me out there in the world. My hope is that through writing openly and honestly about my own journey of becoming, I will find my kindred spirits. That we will learn and grow together, bonded by our shared imperfections and insatiable curiosity.

I hope you build and/or find your community online too <3

Thanks for being here with me and growing with me!

This is the house where I started my online writing journey. I am very grateful for my housemates who pushed me to keep writing every day during the time when I was jobless and kept getting rejections. Without them and consistent writing, I would never take a leap of faith to go back home. I am proud of Esther for her commitment to her writing as well.

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My journey writing online is inspired by the Writing On The Net course’s 30-day blogging challenge and a community of lifelong bloggers that pushes me to stop overthinking and just start writing.