I'm thinking of writing more.

Does anybody know any good words?

November 18 2020

I'm thinking of writing more.

The world today really doesn't want me to. Words have been deemphasised. "Stories" are the currency of today. And every story becomes a fleeting moment, as we relay the abridged version of our lives to an audience desperate to swipe you away into the ether in anticipation of the next.

The watershed moment for this was, I believe, Instagram stories. This was the moment when the vision of Snapchat and it's ephermerality became validated, and isotopic implementations started appearing in every space we inhabit on the Internet.

Perhaps our lives have now become ineffable. Perhaps I am a dinosaur; left reeling, as the more zoologically advanced seize the moment to inundate our screens with their tweets and tiktoks, and resign paragraphs to be a relic of the Phrontistery.


Despite that, here I am, writing a blog. Kalsarikännit in hope of finding inspiration. Rambling to no end.

This isn't my first foray into the personal blogosphere. The first was when I was 11 years old. There were no platforms, and even search wasn't so ubiquitous. The Internet was like the wild west, any my WWE website could only be found with a serendiptous stroke of luck.

After that I tried my hand at running an MSN community. This was almost a precursor to social networks, and unfortunately I cannot find any proof that it even existed. However, this was the first time that my words on the internet could be used to achieve the ever-elusive ambition: to make friends.

Since then, my writing has predominantly been hosted on Medium. When it first launched, Medium was a revelation. The interface was simple and clutter-free (and has quite clearly inspired this one), and it was easy to discover and read lots of articles. It was almost like a Seachfhreastalaí for our content. Unfortunately, like much of the internet, it succumbed to the desire to make money. Today the site is littered with icky popups and barriers, and my words no longer feel like my own.


Which brings me to today, and finally mustering up the courage to host my own writing. While it is terribly exciting to be able to break out of the box, it is also quite terrifying.

Right now, if I was a custard, perhaps I'd be a Soufflé - puffed up bravado filled with hot air that is waiting to collapse, without the stable pastry base of a Cremeschnitte to keep me grounded. It is the question I always ask when I put anything out into the world: who cares? Why does my story matter? What if my words aren't good enough. What is the elixir that will turn my bland blancmange into a shimmering quindim? The maple syrup to pour over my galaktoboureko to make it that bit sweeter.

Maybe one day I will find the confidence that my words deserve to last longer than a moment. Until then, I will leave the preantepenultimate until the end.

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