Why I write

This post is a reminder to myself.

I’ve started blogs, private journals, email threads, subreddits, many times over, and never stuck to them. However, as time goes by, I’ve accumulated a series of reasons to write more, and I’m listing them here as a self-motivation tool for when I notice myself dragging my feet on adding content to this website.

Review

Writing helps place memories into context. Whether it’s a book I read, a place I went to, or a thing I did, it helps to mentally go over it, gather my thoughts, and condense the most salient aspects of my experience together into a narrative. It’s a reflective process that lets me understand what happened, what I learnt from it, and what I felt about it.

Remember

There is no way to remember every books I’ve read, each of the places I’ve been, or all of the ideas I’ve had, without a record. Photos, though useful, certainly don’t capture all of this information. Jotting down a n account after the fact helps me revisit the experience and reference it in the future.

Feedback

There’s nothing like writing to force me to get to the point. It may be that I was mistaken, my idea bad, or that I haven’t really understood something I thought I did at all. Having a clear and concise description of my thoughts gives me a tool to get feedback that helps me correct my mistakes and learn something new.

I’d like to end with a quote by Leslie Lamport that’s driven me on this and which I hope will continue to inspire me:

If you think without writing, you only think you’re thinking. – Leslie Lamport

This article was also cross-posted to Medium.