"If you stand for nothing Burr, what will you fall for?"
- Alexander Hamilton in the musical

I‘ve always thought of myself as a writer - so how come my website’s “Writing” section is so conspicuously empty?

In private conversations, I regularly rave about how amazing the internet is, and how we all have the transformative power of the printing press (but x1000) at our disposal. And yet, the sum total of manifestos, pamphlets, and exaltations I‘ve produced thus far is zero. This post is supposed to be both a diagnosis and an attempt at a cure for this condition.

In the musical Hamilton, there’s a verse where Aaron Burr says:

This has made all too much sense to me for years for a few reasons:

• My youth and early adulthood coincided with the emergence of cancel culture online, so I‘ve always been lukewarm on the utility of sharing heartfelt thoughts online.
• I‘m a software engineer with a focus on machine learning, so I‘ve been lucky that my skills are currently in high demand, and that I‘ve not had to think too hard about building a brand online in order to get opportunities to get paid for what I‘m good at.
• Writing well takes a lot of effort and once something is shared online, there‘s pretty much no taking it back.
• It takes time to find one’s voice and on the way there you’re almost guaranteed to churn out a fair share of cringe, which might not age well.

In summary, it seemed like Aaron Burr’s words were wise and that writing online has almost no upside and considerable potential downsides.

And yet, whose face is on the 10 dollar bill?

Paradoxically, I‘ve always thought of myself as a writer. I liked writing essays in school and am somewhat enamored by the general aesthetic of the craft of writing. These days I write on average ~1500 words of notes every day; occasionally much more if I‘m researching something new (or I‘m upset about a particular cultural inadequacy). So this is clearly not a matter of me not having enough to say, but rather a lack of courage to hit the publish button.

I‘m under no illusions that publishing a measly blogpost here and there will create a multi-century legacy or contribute meaningfully to my lifelong dream of having my visage on a piece of government-backed paper. However, I‘ve recently discovered a large hitherto underappreciated downside of not writing publicly: If I don’t write (and publish!), people (and even close friends!) won’t know what I stand for. One would think that casual verbal communication would lead to a transfer of knowledge and understanding. However, in my experience, unless one is super deliberate about this, this isn’t actually true. We all have a tendency to hear what we want to hear (and don’t hear the things we don’t want to hear!). To minimise silent ideological drift and the number of “No one understands me” edgelord moments in my life, I’ve therefore decided to give myself permission to publish more of my writing, even if it’s less than perfect.