Re-manifesto of this blog

Or what you can expect from this page for the next year

The Why

I mean, ideally, when you read this blog, it would have such exciting hooks that Vox reaches out to hire me, a story angle that Martin Scorsese has to bow for, the fun that makes Tim Urban slides into my dm to drop “😂🤣,” and the wisdom that makes Rainer Rilke himself resurrects from his grave to tell me “you are right.” You would wow. You would know that you’re my target audience and that you’ve come to the right place to spend your precious time.

But right now, my writing makes me feel more like this:

I don’t have a clear expertise, target audience, or direction.

My worst fear for this blog is that no one cares to read, so I write to an empty echo chamber.

Or worse, someone reaches out to say: “BASIC.”

Amidst all these fears and confusion, Rainer Rilke asked me through his book, letters to a young poet, “Do you need to create?”

“Yes.”

Simple and resounding.

I imagine myself doing this “side project” thing where I do creative stuff for 1-2 hours each day, for a year. I imagine myself stopping after a year and just focusing on my software engineering job. The thought became unbearable.

So for now, I only have the pure and simple urge to be creative to start with, with no clear direction yet.

The How

Problem is, “being creative” is the most nebulous guide ever, especially given my interest range:

a literal representation of being “all over the place”

The smart thing to do, given how I learn, is to pick one of those crafts, focus and achieve mastery.

How I often learn a skill

I’ve observed my skillset jump once I have a deadline that makes me really care. Then I get obsessed for 1-2 weeks and master the details that took me years before. For example, my dance skills were meh for 6 years before I got accepted to a dance crew with a performance deadline. Then I practiced each move for two hours. Then I rocked the performance and my dance skills reached a different level since.

I spent a week getting overwhelmed by the scope of my interest and the desire to be good/great at all of them, following the learning curve above. But I like everything and just can’t pick. So I decided to do the following:

Spend 1-1.5h each day, the first thing in the morning, to do ANY creative craft.

There are only 2 principles I will follow:

• Follow my curiosity/ what’s fun

• Commit. No matter how bored or uninspired I get halfway through, I need to finish the project.

I created another set of guides for my writing:

• If I’m writing something that could be written by ChatGPT (or sounds like a general blog post that could’ve been anyone), I should redo it.

• Be honest, even if that means I’m not pretty/kind/wise:

  • this means not forcing myself to have 5-second takeaways for each post, teach a life lesson, or follow a rigid story arc.

The What

For you, readers: from now on, I will send a weekly update on all the creative projects I’ve worked on within that week. It’d be anything from writing, drawing, video making, or dance choreography. I merely want to practice the creative muscle and push back the internal judgment.

There will be no scope limit to the projects I commit to. However, I will limit myself to 3 projects with “In progress” status at any given time. I’m experimenting with this number. This limit is to stop me from the tendency to overcommit and never finish.

Through this practice, I hope the compounding effect will work wonder, so that a year from now, I look back and found myself much more creatively free and skilled (able to express myself). I also want to prioritize action over thinking, get the data from the actions, then move forward. This approach aligns with how I imagine my ideal career will pan out:

You reading this, loyal fan or not, is already a source of support for me. So thank you for being here. I hope to bring you some joy each week.

P/s: if you have any guide to scope your creative process, I’d love to hear.