Note: Wrote this as a submission to today's Write.As Cues prompt. I thought I'd keep a copy of it regardless if it gets posted or not.
A lot of people are probably familiar with the old proverb, “home is where the heart is.” I find that old proverb to still ring true today.
Home to me is not a country, a city or a place. Home is where my family is. Home is where my wife and kids are. Home is where my dad and mom and siblings are. Home is where my trusted friends are.
I want to get back to writing for myself. When I started this online journal, all I was looking for was a place to write down my thoughts. A place where I can express myself. An outlet. A hobby.
Somewhere along the way I lost sight of this. I bought into the idea that I should write posts that have value. And that those were the only kind of posts worth writing about. And while that is a very admirable goal, I realized that I could not sustain that kind of effort. Not when I work full time as a senior software developer. I also realized that it changed how I write: I was writing for the views; I was writing to an audience.
Work is not supposed to be fun. By work, I mean the kind where you are getting paid to provide a service to a company or employer or client. By that definition, it is almost guaranteed that sooner or later you will be asked to do something that is not fun.
I believe it is rare for someone to have a job that is also fun 100% of the time. An example are professional athletes. I'm sure they enjoy the sport they participate in, but even they have to put in the work to improve their game and their physical conditioning. That is just part of the job.
I'll use myself as another example. I love programming and I love solving problems by writing code to solve them. To me that's fun. However, working as a software developer is not “solving problems by writing code” 100% of the time. I still have to drive through traffic to get to and from the office. I still need to write documentation. I still need to work through ugly legacy code. I still need to do code reviews. I still need to train new developers. I still need to do compliance training. I still need to attend meetings. The list goes on and on and on. All of that comes as part of being employed as a software developer. None of those are necessarily fun, but they are to be expected of me, because that is part of the job. That is the work that needs to be done.
After my digital declutter, I thought I'd change the focus of my online journal. Less personal posts, more post of “value”. What I didn't realize then, but do now, is that almost every post on a personal blog, journal or website is personal commentary. You just cannot get away from it because you are the author. Unless you are copying someone else's work and writing it down, the thoughts that you transform into words are all personal. Your environment, your knowledge, your culture, your experiences, they are all personal aspects that determine the words that you write down.
When I look back at my posts on the loaner car that I got, I see that everything I wrote, my observations, my notes, they were all personal commentary. When I look back at the book reviews I've written, they're all personal commentary. Even my posts on digital minimalism, which are the posts that I think are of “value”, they are all still personal commentary.
I think I was looking at it the wrong way. It might be the case that personal commentary on a subject, is what gives a post value.
It is actually kind of embarrassing to look back on it, thinking I could have avoided personal commentary on my posts. I was naive then, but as is the case with life, you live and you learn. If I cannot avoid personal commentary, I might as well embrace it.
Tags: #Reflection #Writing
We all have our own values, likes, wants and preferences. No ones lives the same exact life as someone else. Everyone's circumstance is different and that shapes the decisions they make in their lives.
You will never make the same decisions as other people, because you are not living, nor have lived the same life that they've had. As such, we cannot expect other people to do or act the same way as we would, because we all live different lives.
Stepping on other people's life choices to make ourselves feel better, is not cool.
We are all different and that is okay. The important thing is that we all respect each other's differences, whether that be online or offline.
I struggle with this everyday. Whenever I do, I try to remember what my wife always likes to say, “Stay in your lane, bro.”
Tags: #Reflection