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Comment by janvdberg | Hacker News Reader

There are many simple reasons to write. Nothing fancy.

Just to name a few (I have a daily blog):

- I kickstart my day with my own thoughts, not someone else's (i.e. social media).

- I can feel I created something instead of just (mindlessly) consuming

- I can work out what I really think about something: when you start to write what you think, you need to understand it or at least order your thoughts

- I have an ever growing vault of things I can point to (I do this a lot)

- I always keep an eye out for interesting things to blog about. It makes you notice more.

- I enjoy it!

The audience is 1 (me).

If there are other people who want to read it, great! But I mainly write to/for me. So why don't I just keep a diary? Accountability. I have to hit publish every day and make what I post coherent. My diary (which I also have) is more incoherent and definitely more boring.

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I love this. I keep a diary but, because it's private, I can skip a day, or a few days, without regret. I like the accountability of it being 'public' (even if no one but me finds it).

I do a better job with "Just draw" and "Just play music" although I don't publish those online either. Now I'm thinking maybe I should.

If you don't have a tendency to yak shave, I highly recommend setting up your own site with drawings or doodles (or anything else you create) then update it whenever and however the fuck you want.

I started potato.horse by publishing a bunch of old late night doodles and notes taken during boring management meetings. There's no expectation of quality. And that's very important for me, as I have a tendency towards perfectionism. Since perfectionism is all or nothing, I'd never get anything done.

I also noticed that it was so much easier to publish stuff there vs. on IG, since social media puts us in a constant performative mode.

You can also heal yourself with writing: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170601-can-writing-abou...

> - I kickstart my day with my own thoughts, not someone else's (i.e. social media).

I like how similar and the same time different our approaches are.

I wrote an app to develop my writing habit (https://enso.sonnet.io). It's a "stream of consciousness" notepad separating writing from editing which makes it harder for you to edit yourself. I've been using it every day for the past 3 years, with ca. 800 words per day and I suck at sticking to habits. Check it out!

My notes are mostly private but I also write longer, researched articles, usually with an outline. As an experiment I wrote https://sonnet.io/posts/sit using Ensō, then spent 1 week rewriting and editing.

> - I have an ever growing vault of things I can point to (I do this a lot)

Have you tried using Obsidian Publish? I use it non stop as a personal knowledge graph and a brain dump. I have a different flow for posting public notes since my site runs on 11ty, but if I didn't care about branding, I'd just use it instead.

What's been holding this project back from being released on platforms other than Mac?

I also wanted to say that it's amazing that you have these calendar slots for people to speak to you. What has your experience been with this? How long have you been doing it? Where did you get the idea? What kind of people show up?

> What's been holding this project back from being released on platforms other than Mac?

Time and focus:

- most of my users use Macs (60%) and I had to pick one platform to start - the web version is perfectly capable (PWA w. offline support)

> I also wanted to say that it's amazing that you have these calendar slots for people to speak to you. What has your experience been with this? How long have you been doing it? Where did you get the idea? What kind of people show up?

I can't recommend it enough! I set it up almost 3 years ago to keep in touch with people after I left London during the pandemic.

Regarding the people, they're generally kind, curious and open. I'd say 2/3 of them are your typical HN readers, product minded engineers, founders, students, some of them really accomplished and some just at the beginning of their path etc... I met a homeless software engineer who turned out to be the author of a project I followed as a teen, then some writers, CXO-level MIT or Berkley alumni with tons of experience. The range is wide.

People are much nicer outside of social media or HN, so this feels a bit like time travel to the period when the discourse was less polarised.

I'm drafting and article about this subject, so will use some of your questions as a reference -- thanks! You can follow me via RSS or the newsletter in the footer of an article. Or just come and say hi https://sonnet.io/posts/hi

> most of my users use Macs (60%) and I had to pick one platform to start

So are you using native technologies?

I must say it's really unique and cool what you're doing with the calendar slots.

> So are you using native technologies?

It's mostly a wrapper for a (slightly) better desktop UX on Mac. I'm using some native APIs, but mostly as a polyfill (e.g. better shortcut support, even cleaner UI, native save dialogs). I might put the app on the App Store, but I'm a bit tired of working with Apple bureaucracy.

I implemented the text editor in other technologies as an experiment (e.g. UIKit, SwiftUI) but web view + a wrapper seems to be the most stable and flexible approach.

> I must say it's really unique and cool what you're doing with the calendar slots.

Thanks! It's quite easy to start actually.

> I kickstart my day with my own thoughts, not someone else's (i.e. social media).

That’s a really interesting thought, thanks.

I noticed (also from my daily notes) that I'm much more focused if I don't use HN or social media before 4-5 pm. I also apply this to email when I can.

I feel like opening your mail app or HN before starting work allows everyone else drop a bunch of unplanned background jobs in your head.

The feeling of creation is actually really satisfying and over time I've found it more enjoyable than straight consumption. Don't have the numbers off the top of my head but people generally consume far more than they create, and they would rather read other people's content than write their own stuff. There is some satisfaction from reading someone else's ideas but IMO it doesn't beat the feeling you get from coming up with and presenting your own opinions. This is true for articles/blogging as well as writing fiction.

I also second the idea of publishing your content publicly - it encourages you to keep the quality up as someone might read it!

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