Comment by adityaathalye

3 days ago

I was there too, I get you.

In the aughts, I had a blog, which I hated re-reading. With the benefit of time and experience (growing up, they call it), I understood that cringe to be the consequence of trying to look smart and/or play to a gallery.

Your instinct is probably right, if you feel some comment of yours is "sleazy" or "obnoxiously self-serving". The jedi mind trick is to not stop there, but to use that cringe moment as a signal for some introspection.

Think about what sort of a share would make you happy to share? What would you like to see more of in the world? Try to be that person. Do you need to share it publicly right away? Or just bang something out in a markdown file and rant to a pal or two?

Only by doing it, did I properly grasp the fact that I just want to share stuff. And now, I tend to like what past-me shared. Even if he was dead wrong. Besides, I've caught myself re-reading a post from some years ago, because of course, I forgot what I was thinking back then. Or needed a reference from one of the copious footnotes / endnotes I habitually slap in there.

Appropriate framing---combined with action (speech, sharing, conversation) that flows from said framing---makes all the difference. For me, that framing is "learn generously": https://www.recurse.com/self-directives#learn-generously

Publishing one's mind can be a pretty vulnerable act.

It often feels like a confession of ignorance. Often it is a confession of ignorance. However, now I don't really care if I look stupid or am wrong on the Internet. Because being wrong, and then making it right is part of the deal! Thus it is, that my website's entire purpose is to help me live that value. To be available to anybody who might find use for it; including the source code.

In practice that materialises as this:

- Paradox! Above all, be entirely self-serving from an "audience" perspective... The posts are mainly long-form explanations written by me for me, while I tried to figure something out that was not obvious to me. No gallery involved. No analytics, in fact. I have no idea which pages are being read (or not).

- Not infrequently, it applies to so many other people facing the same questions / obstacles I grappled with. And here's the plot twist... Now when I see someone struggle, it behooves me to share my PoV. Not sharing is the "bad" act!

- Technologically, I try to remove all friction from the reader. The site is served as plain HTML and CSS, with excellent lighthouse scores, pleasant reading experience, anonymous RSS feed. Content is CC-licensed, site builder is MIT-licensed. (Screen reader accessibility can definitely use work, but the markup is definitely not a "soup of divs" abomination).

- Certainly not "make money", whatever that means. According to Cloudflare, my site consistently gets ~20K monthly unique visitors (supposedly human / non-bot). I don't even know what that means. It's just "internet number go up".

My real joy is getting the occasional email from some kindred spirit. Once a month someone lights up my life with a delightful conversation. Why? Because I openly welcome it! You can write me too :) https://www.evalapply.org/about.html#standing-invitation

(See, yet another self-share... which I feel fine about, even in a somewhat contentious sub-thread, because I really want to have a proper letter exchange, should you feel up for it!)