Centring text
My website is heavily text-based, intentionally. There are no videos and barely any images, not even design elements like a logo. You could even look at my website perfectly with no CSS. All of my work on the website's content is writing. So why do I focus exclusively on text and writing? Most centrally: it allows me to engage in the idea creation practice I need, in an enjoyable and accessible medium.
Thought overconsumption and undercreation
What is the a person's essence, if not their ideas and what actions those ideas drive them to do, what life those beliefs drive them to live? Building your Self and your life fundamentally starts with building your personal thoughts. In this way, the main component of the enriched human experience to create ideas, not just to consume them.
Of course, the basic starting point to building key ideas is usually consuming the ideas of others. Ideas of others come in many forms: their words, their music, or their art. Seeing what and how other people think isn't unimportant. Staying totally unexposed to the thoughts of others risks, at best, only understanding the world shallowly.
Yet, what really forms the Self is creating and expressing your own ideas, whether externally or just in your mind. Creating ideas usually means reflecting on, synthesising, and transforming with your own perspective those ideas of other people to which you are exposed.
Digital technology has pushed people toward doing too much idea consumption and not enough of their own thinking, since consuming ideas has become easier at a much faster rate than forming your own. Technology has obviously made it easier to express yourself — I am publishing this essay on a website, after all. But, as much as technology has made sharing your own ideas easier, it has made finding and consuming the ideas of others even easier. All kinds of formats — news, audiobooks, podcasts, blogs, tweets, hot takes, and influencer posts — are now available at any time of day. On the subway, out in the city, and in my own home, I observe people ingesting a constant influx of information on their screens, through their earbuds. The ideas of others have more and more crowded out the space for people to develop their own.
In the beginning, phones, even cellphones, were mostly used for communicating in an equal exchange with other people. We would use them to call or text our friends, exchanging and developing new ideas with them collaboratively. Now, we frequently consume ideas one-directionally: a small number of people produce the content, and the rest of us consume it. The one-directional nature of content has separated people into two types of internet citisen: the Content Creator and the Content Consumer. In the process, people who are now content consumers have lost a lot of the time they used to spend developing their personal thoughts in discussions with friends or on their own during quiet unoccupied moments. I am certainly not exempt from this pattern. I have written previously of my own habit of mindlessly watching hours of YouTube videos if left unchecked. In reaction to this growing pattern, many have called for social media detoxes, or for longer-term digital minimalism practices; for picking up a book.
I think we need something more general. Though being online has definitely pushed most people toward idea consumption, it isn't the only culprit. I think most of us need to re-establish the balance between idea consumption and idea creation. Maybe we should replace some of our time online with books, music, or podcasts, but I don't think we should entirely. We also need to reclaim room for our own idea processing, creation, and expression. We need time staring into space with nothing but our thoughts. We need more time discussing, exchanging, and building ideas with our loved ones. In short, we need more opportunities to have and share our own ideas.
Writing, the universal medium
Words, and, by extention, writing, are the universal medium of self-discovery and self-expression. Maybe I am just bad at art and making music, so I'm forced to relegate myself to writing, but writing is precisely democratic this way. Though I shouldn't say that everyone looking at a website can read and write, I'd guess that most can put words to their thoughts, whether written, spoken, or vocalised simply in their heads. If you can draw or paint, choose the media best for you! But for those who can't, the word is a reliable and elegant option.
Personally, I don't feel writing is a last resort into which I'm forced. I derive pleasure from its practice simply, not least because it precisely gives me a way to work through and refine my own ideas. Many more prolific writers than me have previously written about how writing clarifies the mind, through exactly its demand for clarity of mind.
Not only is writing democratic in its availability among people, it is democratic in its availability across time, space, and situation. I can write anywhere, at any time. I can write however I want: with a pen and loose paper, in a notebook, typing on my computer, or on my phone. The flexibility is great! I use all of these methods, depending on which best suits the topic I'm thinking about. Writing is always there, ready for me to put words to the, perhaps metaphoric, paper.
What's more, despite how simple it is to begin writing, there is a lot of depth possible. A very skilled writer can communicate their ideas sharply, like shooting an arrow loaded up with exactly what they're thinking directly into the reader's brain. Of course, they must also have been clear thinkers before they even have a chance of communicating their ideas precisely. I don't think I'm nearly at that stage either way — reading my writing is probably more like trying to make out a fuzzy shape behind a frosted pane of glass. But the possibility of both conceptualising and sharing my ideas with clarity and grace is captivating, even if nobody reads my essays but myself. It drives me to practice writing with joy. Beyond the dexterity of precise communication, the skill of writing also has an artistic side. Developing a writing "voice" is another absorbing challenge. Combining the depth of writing with its simplicity, it is really the best medium for refining and expressing my own ideas, the idea creation that builds my Self.
Writing for a reader
I write because it's how I understand and become who I am. I write for my Self. But I must acknowledge that if self-discovery were the whole goal of writing, I could just keep a private journal for these essays. Though I try not to think about it too much, there is a public component of publishing essays online. I don't really have analytics or any interest in reaching lots of silent readers — in the spirit of my main thoughts above, I think much more about a reader that would give personal feedback and discussion. Often there is one such reader: me in the future.
Regardless of the identity of this elusive reader, I focus on text in their service too. Just as text can be written anywhere, text can also be easily read anywhere. People can read on their phones, save for offline reading, print the page for later, or use a screenreader. There is no dependence on an image or video viewing device. I want to give any potential reader as much freedom as possible in how they consume my ideas.
Usually, I even try to avoid links (to other sites or elsewhere on my own site), because I prefer for my writing to be self-contained. There are two reasons why. First, more conceptually, if I am writing to express my own focused idea, then linking to another piece of writing goes against this goal — even if it is another piece of my own writing. My goal is to be able to identify, then express, my idea so that it can stand on its own. Second, more practically, it makes reading the essay less restrictive. If there were links, a reader would need to read the essay in a browser, while connected to the internet. I know I am going against the common advice of taking advantage of your medium: if you are writing online, then links are a feature that other forms of writing might not have. Crucially, though, I feel my medium is writing more simply. I don't want to tie my writing specifically to the web. Who knows? Maybe in the future, I might collect my writings together and republish them in some other format. As Kim K once famously did, maybe I will turn my posts into a book.
What do you think?
I have tried my best to solidify my thoughts on the merits of writing in this essay. If you have consumed my idea, thank you. Though I didn't emphasise it in a post focused on personal essay writing, I do think discussion is an equally important way we form and refine our thoughts. If you have something to share, please do. The link to email me at the end of this essay (see, I can use features of the medium if I want!) is not just lip service. I would love to hear from you.