I used to write on my phone on my commutes to work. I think I initially did most of it on an Android phone, in Evernote. Neither the phone nor the app really matters. Right now I’m doing the same thing on my iPhone in my iOS notes. I’m not commuting this time, I’m just lying on my sofa at home at 531am. Why am I doing this? I’m trying to re-inhabit an old state. I wrote maybe half a million words like this. Why did I do that? It was just really important to me. I loved words and I loved writing and I was determined to keep some semblance of my creative spirit alive. 

My work was very busy – I was working in marketing for a fast-paced software company with a team that I loved, which was quite all-consuming. And I wasn’t very good at managing my time, I wasn’t very good at prioritising. I’m still not great at it, almost a decade later, which is something I can be sheepish and embarrassed about. But when I look back on my life now, the time I spent writing on my commutes is something I’m inordinately proud of. It would’ve been so easy to just space out, play games, scroll through social media– and I did do some of those things as well– but I kept returning to the blank page and filling it up as best as I could, because something in my heart told me that it was the right thing to do, that I would be proud of myself for doing it (correct), and that I would be disappointed with myself if I didn’t do it (I guess we’ll never know).

There’s something sort of sad and mysterious to me about the state of my writing today. I don’t write volumes of text the way I used to. And here I think I’m being harsh on myself because what happened was that I transitioned from writing essays – I called them “word vomits” because they were very haphazard, meandering, “purposeless” –I went from writing essays to doing twitter threads. And I’m grateful and proud of myself for doing those numerous twitter threads. I’ve posted over 230,000 tweets from 2008 to 2023, and I really hit my stride from about 2017 to 2022. I now have an audience of over 58,400 followers. Granted, a bunch of them might be inactive, or bots, but it’s still tens of thousands of people, which would have been incredible to my teenage self. I like to think that I pioneered or at least synthesized-and-popularized a very particular style of threading and quote-tweeting, building out an intricate patchwork of utterances. I also helped contribute towards establishing a sense of community of like-minded tweeters. This might sound odd to anybody who thinks of Twitter as a sort of firestorm hellscape of politics and drama, but me and my friends managed to carve out a little oasis for ourselves and it’s been chugging along very nicely. 

Towards the later years I started getting somewhat weary of writing twitter threads. I could rave about the benefits of tweeting prolifically– it helps me pay my bills, helps me discover opportunities, make friends, all sorts of excellent things. But every medium is constrained in a certain way by its very nature, and I think for me as a creative, I’ve found myself brushing up against those constraints in ways that I found limiting, chafing. It’s interesting to look back and note that it was the opposite when I started. I was getting weary of writing wordvomits that seemed to meander aimlessly around the same old territory, with diminishing returns. Twitter focused and sharpened my thinking. I started to think in tweets. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Container using your thoughts makes them more accessible, not just to others but also to yourself. It makes them easier to reference, remix, rework, build on. But lately I’ve been hungering for the inaccessible thoughts. There are some thoughts you can only access after writing continuously for maybe an hour, where you do a bunch of preamble to establish a context and then dive deeper. You don’t have that luxury on Twitter, few people are really going to read a 50-tweet long thread. Even if you write it really well, the nature of the medium simply isn’t set up for that. People don’t click on Twitter with the intent of reading essays. So if you want people to read essays, it’s best to publish them somewhere other than twitter. Right now I like the idea of using Substack as a home for my more thoughtful, considered essays. But I don’t know if I’ll always feel that way. I’ve been around long enough to know that digital empires rise and fall. I used to write a lot on Quora, until eventually it became less fun. I used to write lengthy Facebook status essays too – I think a couple of those essays even made it into my first ebook, Friendly Ambitious Nerd.

Gosh. It really is somehow easier to write on my phone than to write at my computer. This is a somewhat strange thing to come to terms with. I could psychoanalyze myself and investigate why this is, and maybe I will, but in the meantime it’s probably more lucrative for me to just write essays in my notes and publish these.

One of the things I was afraid of is that if I “go back” to writing word vomits “like I used to”, then my essays will be tedious, without substance. I’m so needlessly harsh on myself. I can’t actually go back, because I’m not the same person I used to be. I’m more skillful in every way. The truth is that even my casual throwaway writing today in 2023 tends to be superior to my most labored, effortful work from a decade ago. And I hope I’ll be able to say that ten years from now, comparing my casual efforts then to my most intense efforts now. Which isn’t to say that intense efforts aren’t worthwhile. I think it all adds up to something. When I’m being harsh on myself I think that a lot of my attempts at essay writing are failures, they’re misshapen drafts that are overwrought, clunky, disorganized. And yet every misshapen draft contributes to my understanding and to my felt sense of what makes an essay beautiful. I want to write beautiful essays. This slightly tyrannical insistence has held my heart, mind and body in a vise-like grip for months, and I have felt some additional shame at having subjected myself to that. I know that my best writing comes from a state of playful lightness. My fingers have to dance with reckless abandon and the words pour out without my conscious involvement. I’ve spent two decades now training for this, and it shows. While there’s still always room for technical study at the level of words, sentences, paragraphs, ideas, arguments and so on, what makes or breaks my work is the spirit that I bring to the table. I’m once again reminded of jazz pianist Kenny Werner, who eloquently advocates for radical self-acceptance on-stage. You must be rigorously honest in your practice, making sure to be practicing at the limit of your ability, but when it’s time to perform, you must disregard the practice and take flight. This is a kind of meditation. This is my kind of meditation. As I write this I revel in how good I am at it, and particularly, how different this specific piece of writing is turning out in contrast to the many drafts I’ve shelved in frustration these past few weeks and months.

One of the things I’ve been trying to help myself see is that I need to know what this substack is really about, who it’s really for. And I do love to challenge myself, to complicate things for myself, in part because I get bored of simple things. (Digression: Maybe at some point it might be worthwhile for me to practice meditating on appreciating the joy of simple things… but actually, what I’m trying to do is take complex things and make them simpler, so I *do* appreciate the joy of simple things!)

I want my substack posts to be a little autobiographical. I want my readers to get to know me, to know some of my history, my values, who I am, where I come from, what I’m about. 

But I don’t want these to be “mere memoirs”. I have other goals, too. I want to be insightful. I’d like it if, anytime you read a visakanv substack post, I gave you something to think about, something to consider. Not just an interesting fact (though I love interesting facts), but a point of view that you can inhabit. A way of seeing.

Would that be enough? A bit of memoir, a bit of insight? That still feels incomplete. I’d want to be encouraging, too. Not in a superficial, trite motivational speech sort of way… I think part of the core essence of my best writing is an unbridled zest for life, and I think you can’t fake that. There’s an act of alchemy about it, an earnestness in the face of despair.

Also I want to describe things. It became clear to me again recently that sometimes that’s the most powerful thing that can be done. I periodically return to Orwell’s essay Why I Write, and he broke it down into a handful of things – sheer egoism (wilful determination to live one’s own life), aesthetic enthusiasm (the joy of words), historical impulse (desire to see things as they are, to contribute to the clarity in the commons), political purpose (to make the world better). What’s good enough for Orwell is good enough for me: if I can have these features in my writing, I will be pleased. What I was trying to say in Voyagers is that I yearn to participate in a tradition of great writing, great writers. And there’s something somewhat alienating about that endeavor. It means having some disregard for what your friends are talking about, and aligning yourself with something more eternal. But as Borges said, you will then find yourself in a vast circle of invisible friends. I want that. I have gotten nourishment from that and I seek to pay it forward to the next kid like myself. And I think that’s what I hungered for on my commutes. 

;;;

2023apr13

It’s funny how the bog of life’s troubles can creep up on you. Even when you’ve done the reading and the reflection and you think you know what to expect. A day passes, then a week, and next thing you know you’re neck-deep in psychic muck, and it’s hard to breathe, hard to move, and the only way out is some kind of intervention. A part of me is ashamed to be here. A slightly more enlightened part of me knows that being ashamed about being stuck only prolongs the stuckness. And so I have to surrender to the reality of my situation, acknowledge that I need help, and let myself be helped. In this case, by myself! By a “higher consciousness” form of myself, it seems like. It’s so bizarre how that somehow works, but it seems to be working. Hey, I’m not going to question it, if the spirit is finally going to move me then who am I to argue?

As I sit here, in my home study, in front of my ridiculously overpowered Macbook and 3 external monitors, I find myself reminiscing on the writing I used to do when I was a kid. I used to write on my family’s home computer at 3am in the morning. When I was in school, I remember sometimes going to the library during recess time to use the computer… to post on forums and to update my blog. I remember buying a secondhand laptop from one of my friends for S$100, and going to Starbucks to write blogposts, where I would nerd out about the nature of complex systems, and cheerfully pontificate about things like “the problem of ignorance” and “how to hack the 7 deadly sins” and rant about local news and politics. I used to write blogposts in the office computer while I was in the military. I remember feeling pride at shipping those old blogposts, some of which I’ve archived, but many of which have been lost to time. I’ve written so much – over a million words easily – that it’s almost inconceivable to me. (And then I reflect with awe about the authors who’ve written even more. The New York Times pegs Isaac Asimov’s total published wordcount at 7.6 million — and the unpublished wordcount is surely at least double that!) I remember once sitting with my laptop and a notebook on a Saturday morning, crying to myself because I had

But here I am, sitting at my computer, looking at a hundred drafts and a thousand notes and wondering to myself, why am I so knotted? Why am I so stuck? What is it that I want to be writing? I’ve gotten so swept up in all my grand plans and schemes about what I should write, that I’ve lost touch with the heart. I remember giving myself advice from one of my alts: “The most important part of a book is its heart.” I todl myself that in May 2021, after I had spent more than a year agonizing over Introspect, and I would still continue to spend 9 more months agonizing further. When I shipped the book, with all its flaws and imperfections, a part of me felt like I was surrendering, giving up. And yeah, I know all the quotes about how “art is never finished, only abandoned”. I feel a sadness in that. I’m reminded of my mortality. There’s a whole essay I’ve been drafting around the idea of “artful incompleteness”, and I continue to stew on it because it doesn’t quite seem artful in its incompleteness.

I don’t know. I don’t want to bore readers. Most critically of all, I don’t wanna bore myself. But if I’m honest, I have to acknowledge that I have been tormenting myself with these directives, intellectually dismissing everything as boring before I can even give myself the time and space to really feel what I’m getting at.

The most important part of a piece of writing is its heart. Maybe not all authors would agree with that. Some might say, the most important thing is that you have a good idea, or a compelling thesis. The most important thing might be a sense of plot, a line of action running through the thing. Or that something you write is well-researched and supported with evidence. I can nod along to all of those things. But for me, if I’m honest with myself, the most important part of a piece of writing is its heart. And my writing has felt heartless as of late. I’ve written enough now that words can spill out of my fingers without my conscious intervention, like a musician improvising along familiar scales. But casual improvisation, while a pleasant way to pass the time, is not performance. And here I want to be careful to remind myself that passing the time pleasantly with one’s craft can be a critical part of continuing to love the work. If you’re not having fun, what’s the point?

Alright, so I’ve done an overview of my experience… I’m reflecting on how I used to love my writing, and then I came to a point where it started to disgust me – just like it did Feynman, who I know I referenced in the post about Seriousness. So I’m repeating myself. How do I feel 

✱ 

1 day later: I used to be more obsessive about video games, I’d play them all day. Technically I have the freedom to play them right now but I don’t want to. I could clean my house right now and I know it would make me happier, but I don’t want to. All I want to do is write and publish an essay that I feel good about. 

I’m remembering what my routine used to be when I went to work. I would write for myself on my commutes. This was before I had a twitter following. It’s somewhat easier to write when you don’t have an audience that you can write to in real time.

I do a lot of my best twitter threads on my phone pacing my kitchen. Every time I sit down at my computer… I have too much space, maybe. The phone actually keeps me focused somewhat. My sentences are more frenetic.