Why am I writing this?

Exploring a question I ask myself every day.

I was just talking to my wife and I realized it’s getting late in the day. So I said, “Welp, time to go write my daily shit stack.”

At the end of last month I decided to write on Substack every day this month. I plan to stick it out to the end because I tend to be a man of my word.

But I have some regrets.

Publishing daily is a pain in the ass. I quickly ran through the obvious writing topics bouncing around in my head. Each piece feels a little half baked. Now, every day I have to really dredge my brain for something to write about. I expect future writing will be a little less frequent and more developed.

So, why did I decide to do this?

My main goal is to get some ideas out there and get better at writing by doing it more often. That’s the only way you can.

Of course there’s a deeper motivation.

I work at a startup that is trying to build the future of job searching. We have extensive professional profiles and job matching and loads of data.

During this project I’ve tested our own application and a lot of other applications that help you find a job. While trying these in earnest I kept running into this constant issue. All of the suggested jobs on all of these platforms suck.

How can job platforms all be so bad?

There are some very real answers to that question. Maybe another time. For myself, though, I realized I just don’t like working on other people’s ideas. It’s brought me constant stress throughout my career.

So, I decided I need to do something about it.

I don’t foresee a near-term future where Substack pays my bills. I don’t even see a short term future where anything other than a regular job pays my bills. But, it’s time to start taking steps in that direction.

It’s hard to make major life and career changes in a single motion. This is something else I’ve learned on this project.

Career changes are usually small and directional.

In Directional Living, Megan Hellerer describes how she had a similar realization about not enjoying the career she had built. She took a drastic step and left it suddenly. However, afterward, she had to take more directional steps to find the right thing and eventually wrote her book.

Directionally, I’m looking to explore my own ideas. Making them public is an easy first step. Unlike Megan, I do enjoy what I do. I won’t quit suddenly. I like building things and trying them out.

I don’t like building things I expect to fail. That’s something I’ve had to do many times in my software career.

It feels like a waste of my precious life hours and you only get so many.