One Thing I Wish I Did Better in 2024

I should have written more.

Dream and Fantasy

One of my fantasies is to be a writer. In this utopia, all I need to do is immerse myself in the thoughts of great thinkers and their beautiful writing. My daily task will be writing about things that interest me—in my own schedule. I will live off royalties and never attend another Zoom meeting again. (Please, Lord.)

I have tried different writing platforms in the last two years: Medium, Instagram, and this personal website.

The painful realization is that the problem is with me, not the platforms. Excuses always come up—a new job, travel plans, grad school application, etc.

Gradually, I realize that maybe, writing is not my dream, but escaping from the corporate bullshit is.

Writing is Difficult

Or maybe writing is difficult, and I was escaping from the difficult thing.

Every day in the last year, I spent an hour reading before I started working (unless, of course, there was an 8 a.m. Zoom meeting).

Those writers effortlessly and beautifully express their ideas. Often, I had an epiphany that I had the "click" moment and had so much to express and share.

But once I opened my laptop, my mind was blank, like that page I was facing. I could not put the vague ideas in my mind into concrete words.

More often than not, I did not push through the discomfort and gave up.

Writing is Learning

Ideas are perfect, but nothing perfect is real. In writing, writers throw their thoughts onto the screen, scrutinize them, and put them together in a way that makes sense.

That is the process of learning and making the idea your own.

In this automatic world where AI can generate thousands of words in seconds, it is more important than ever to be able to form our own thoughts and express ourselves effectively and persuasively.

An additional benefit of writing is that it records my growth. I recently re-read some notes I had taken over the years. I laughed at most of the things I worried about and cringed at my desires. I was also moved by how some people helped me enormously and even some of my aspirations.

My writing reminded me how far I have come, where I am today, and where I should be heading.

These are all very difficult, much more difficult than I imagined before I actually did it myself. But I have every reason to carry on.

Don't Beat Yourself Too Hard And Celebrate A Bit

We are our worst critics. One lesson I learned in 2024 is that we should be slightly more lenient toward ourselves. So, I will just pick up where I left off. I will start writing again on this blog regularly (or irregularly). I'm doing this for at least one person—myself.

Don't get me wrong - I don't think I had a year in vain.

Time to show off a bit of what I did in 2024: -

• read excellent books that fundamentally change how I see life;
• learned Japanese rather seriously (which I planned to do in 2023);
• learned swimming (I can now easily swim over 1 kilometer when I used to struggle to swim across a 50-meter pool);
• traveled multiple times with my wife, parents, and friends to exciting places;
• spent a year (and am still hanging on) in a new job.

Dear friends, it'd be great to know how your 2024 is. Feel free to comment below or send me a private message!