August 2020
Why Write
I was 8 years old the first time I used a word processor. I had to write an essay on the eight key concepts of the local martial arts studio I attended in a [Southern Illinois]. I remember liking how adaptive the screen was compared to pen and pencil. My mistakes felt less permanent, and I had an unlimited supply of highlighters, erasers, and colored pens. I was able to focus more on writing and less on preparing to write.
I maintained a journal in one form or another for most of my childhood, but I stopped writing regularly around high school. I was more interested in reading, sports, and enjoying time with my friends. I also wasn’t interesting enough to write about anything. At 27 years old, I’m still not that interesting.
So why write?
Around the time I turned 20, I started to really hone in on my life’s purpose. In 2019, my grandfather passed away. There was so much I still didn’t know about him and so much I felt he wanted to share, but wasn't able to. My great-grandfather passed away before he could meet my dad. I only have pictures of him. What was he like? What was it like growing up like he did? There are lots of question I have which won't get answers, but had they written down answers in advance, I'd have the rest of my life to read and learn from them. Should I be so fortunate to one day become a father, I want to be the best I can be. And that means planning for the worst. If I die young, how could I mitigate the damage? I could buy life insurance so my family is financially stable, but financial wellbeing is only one facet of the cura personalis. My wife might be happy to finally have some peace and quiet, but my kids would miss out on conversations with dad. I wouldn’t be able to teach them what I want to teach them — and worse, they wouldn’t be able to learn from my mistakes. My relatives won't be able to answer those questions, but maybe I can answer them for my kids.
Journaling may be a way to achieve this. Randy Pauch inspired this idea with his last lecture which I remember watching as a senior in high school but never considered implementing myself until recently. I don’t want to become a professional writer nor monetize a blog. I don’t want to convince the world that X is right and Y is wrong. I don’t want to tell people what to do, how to act, or who to be. I just want to talk with my kids.
I thought about making voice or video recordings, but I realized I would end up transcribing them later. I figured it would be faster to just write the transcription and skip the recording. Writing can be done silently, requires less equipment, and people read faster than they listen, so it seems like a more effective medium for what I'm trying to accomplish.
If you're so interested in talking with your kids, why write publicly?
Good question. I considered writing privately and giving my kids a usb or repository with a bunch of word documents for them to read, but decided against it. At the risk of sounding self-absorbed, there's a chance I may have a useful nugget of insight every now and then. If so, I’d like to share it with as many people as possible, not just my kids. I learned a lot from people who wrote things and made them freely available. If I can pay it forward, I should.
The selfish reason to write publicly is that there is a lot that I do not know, and this medium is a great way to get answers to questions I care about. It’s easy to shout into the void in social media and get downvoted into oblivion without intelligent respones. Writing a journal entry seems more intimate. I can develop a relationship with the reader and focus on the topic at hand. We can have lengthy conversations without interruption, advertisements, or hot takes. If I need a particularly quick answer, I can take advantage of Cunningham’s law. And by laying this out in a meta-post, I may be able to get some sympathy for when I inevitably write something completely full of shit.
But the most important reason for using this medium is accessibility. Every single essay I write is addressed to my kids, and I want them to be able to easily reference these ideas, writings, and lessons. Everything is laid out, time stamped, categorized, and available as long as the web server is still running. In the event that they want to build on it, the code is also available in a repository for their use. Maybe one day my kids or grandkids will add their thoughts and this project will turn into a virtual time-capsule of sorts. That'd be pretty cool!
Also, making this a project for my family is a choice which will be reflected in my vernacular. When I say you, I'm referring to my family. My hope is that by the time they read these posts, it feels more like a normal conversation with their dad.
Ultimately, my goal is to give them a better life than I had — and I've had a damn good life so far. That’s the metric I will use to guage my success as a parent. It's my only KPI. My guiding north star.
We don't inherit the Earth from our ancestors — we borrow it from our children.