Should I write?

“Why do you write like you’re running out of time?”

Aaron Burr, Hamilton

There are reasons why I want to write publicly and there are reasons why I am dreading the idea of doing it. Let’s weigh them.

I will add them to the scales one by one.

Let’s start with a reason to write

I really want to keep myself accountable for doing more deep thinking whenever I have an alluring end of an interesting thought. In the moment I tend to have countless ideas in my head while I am biking, watching something, taking a shower… They are buzzing in my head and I never fully finish them. They remain Twitter-like thoughts that have potential, but as I do not sit down to work on them, they die unfinished. I definitely want to build the discipline and change that.

Now a reason not to write

I change like crazy. My aims, my ambition and my sense of the world all evolve fast, and I am scared that my writing will cement one version of me that people will keep mistaking for today’s me. Six years ago I was a kid in Russia who dreamt of winning national math olympiads and cared about grades and a cute classmate. Now I work in London and think about how AI will change the world and how to make my life more impactful. All this time I have kept a small blog for friends. I love it as a collection of memories, but I cringe a little reading it: the person in it is someone I love, and obviously someone else. I suspect I will one day look back at today’s me with the same mix of nostalgia and embarrassment.

A niche reference: I personally just get Morgenshtern so much. The scale of transformation he went through might look quite extreme, but when I think about my own personal change through the same time, it just becomes so obviously understandable to me.

Let’s add reason to write 2

To find people in the world who think similarly. This is honestly a huge one. I work as a talent investor in the startup ecosystem right now and for the first time I feel like I belong professionally. Before, I tried to go into the purely academic world and into the corporate world, and it never worked out because it was not my thing… Now, being surrounded by people who care about the same things that I care about, I see how critical it is to find “your people” and I desperately want to be seen, heard and understood by “my people”.

And one more not to write…

I tend to undervalue my own ideas. I love learning, and my favourite feeling is having one of my beliefs updated by something new. The flip side is that anything I already know, or anything that fits neatly into what I already think, leaves me unimpressed. I hold my own writing to the same bar: if a thought is not more advanced than where I already am, it seems too obvious to publish. But that bar is impossible to clear, because nobody can write above the level of their own thinking. So I am trying to stop applying it to my writing.

Let’s add reason to write 3

I want to better master the skill of putting abstractly shaped internal ideas into clear written text. There is obviously a gap between having a thought inside you and clearly passing it on to others. I am not the most skilled person in this regard, and I would love to improve.

Hm, and another one not to write

I dislike being wrong, and I take people challenging me quite seriously. I am not even sure why I am so cautious, but I overthink things and do not like losing grip on nuances, yet saying things without assuming some level of abstraction and having internal assumptions is quite hard.

To demonstrate this, here is a small example from writing this text. Somewhere in the intro I initially had a sentence that roughly said “People who are smart write a lot”… The point was that it is good practice among smart people to share their thoughts, and I want to try doing the same because I strive to be smart, etc., etc. And then I had a whole chain of crazy thoughts regarding the ways to challenge this. There are probably very smart people who are super secretive and would not write anything. And why am I even using “smart” here? Do I imply that I am smart? Am I smart? So, as you see, I love overthinking :)

And one more reason to write…

I have amazing parents, and I was lucky to grow up surrounded by love and care. They always supported my small, childish writings and read every one of them carefully, and they still re-read them when they miss me, since I have not lived with them for years. When I closed my small personal channel, I promised them I would start writing longer pieces one day, and they have asked about it ever since. They do not know English, so they will have to translate this, but they will read it. So I already have two amazing readers, and that alone makes it worth writing.

The main point of it: I will write. I will feel uncomfortable, cringe at my older posts and be mistaken about things, but I will write because I really believe that one has to fundamentally be out there — write or wrong, explore the world and be accountable to stay curious.

Some of you might have some context on me, and I invite you to use this post as a space to give me inspiration and let me know what you are curious about / ask your questions / share ideas about what you care about knowing, and I will try my best to write about them. All the places where you can reach me are on my about page.