Why write?

For I don't think there is a better way to make sense of the daily life that is passing through us so fast!

Photo by Tania Malréchauffé on Unsplash

Beginnings are hard. Consistency is even harder!

I have been trying to write at various places online over the years, but the platform kept changing due to its declining popularity or because I was just getting irritated with it.

I started writing in WordPress; then, at some point, it became so clunky to maintain the plugins + the free tier forced ads, which intensely disliked my taste. I started writing in Quora when it was super popular back in 2015, but then it went out of popularity, at least in my circles, and then it also went behind a paywall. Then I started writing in medium! It also went behind a paywall, and I never found engaging subscribers to talk to about the shared articles. Then, I just started writing in a personal online diary at some point, but it's hard to share it with others that way.

Finally, I just built a free GitHub page and hosted all my articles there. It is a simplistic blog that works even today, but the problem is determining whether people react to it. I have learned that without a good feedback loop, everything is bound to become dysfunctional and suffer from disuse. This is pretty much the same reason why all closed-loop control systems are stable and open-loop systems are a hit or a miss!

After all the juggling, I have come to Substack, hoping to keep it as a permanent base. It also seems popular, and I have read great content on it so far. And the decision to monetize is solely of the creator and not of the platform, which makes sense to me!

1. Why this, why now

I notice so many nuances in day-to-day life that are worth sharing! So far, they get leaked as short snippets in my Instagram stories, but I have always been dissatisfied with them. Almost every time I finish typing an idea, I feel it could use more explanation for the added nuance. Nor do I want to go to Twitter or Threads, for the real need is the depth in articulation first, and secondly, maintaining an engaging feedback loop. Twitter gets polemical quickly, and radical thoughts sell like hotcakes there, for the concept of trending or opinion wars is awarded with more viewership. It's not my forte, nor do I want to ever be in that zone.

2. What kind of community are you looking to build here

In this fast-paced world, we experience many emotions but don’t process them at all! A friend stopped talking to me, which made me sad. Then a old friend from grade school reached out to me and I was jubilant. Recently, I watched Messi score a goal at the ripe age of 37, and the stadium went crazy!

These are some of the glimpses of my life from recent days. I am pretty sure everyone has a plethora of such emotions going through their heads and hearts all the time. But do we ever sit, relax, and analyze what these mean for us? Do we spend any time slowing down and processing these?

I think we have entirely numbed ourselves into busyness and activity. I want to share how each of these emotions feels, how they affect me, how humane the world eventually is, and that, good or bad, this is life. And if articulated well, there is a glimpse of bliss even within the mundane.

I hope that my blog can bring joy to someone who can relate to something I experienced recently, or if not, it can open up possibilities for the plethora of emotions that all of us, humanity at large, feel. I hope that through this blog, a connection builds somewhere in someone to know that we all are in this world together.

Sometimes, it might get blurry thanks to marketing tactics, Instagram profiles, and the heavy political radicalization we must endure, for this is the nature of the society we live in—but still, deep down under, we are all ONE! There is Unity in Diversity. And I want to share such insights here!

3. Posting Frequency

I will try to post every two weeks. I would love to post once every week, but that is promising too much. That way, the quality will surely deteriorate. I am a believer in starting small but firm and on a clearer and surer footing!

Everything is free for now. Paid subscription doesn’t make sense to me, at least now. Let’s see what the future has in it for us.