This is the 1000th post [1] I’ve written for this blog.
A little over 8 years ago I typed the first post [2] for the blog. I was young—I hadn’t even had my 18th birthday yet. And I was full of enthusiasm, if lacking in experience.
Originally I hadn’t planned on being a writer for a living. I had started out thinking I would make games with a personal development theme, and the blog was initially just to practice writing. I only ended up making one program [3], before discovering writing was an easier way of expressing ideas than programs.
The blog grew up as I did. It went with me through college, living in France [4], building a full-time business [5], the MIT Challenge [6] and it continues with me today (I’m writing these words in Taiwan, preparing for the final leg of my language-learning project [7]). My entire adult life is here, somewhere between the lines.
The themes of my writing changed as I did. I started by emulating my favorite writers of the time, Steve Pavlina [8], Tony Robbins [9] and David Allen [10]. I wrote with an authoritative voice on all topics, without irony, as I didn’t know of any other way to write. I’d like to believe I’ve learned a little more humility since then, trying to focus my writing on the topics where I feel I can offer something unique.
Today, I hardly read any personal development or business books at all [11]. The blogs I read are mostly academics, scientists and people much smarter than myself. I’ve come to admire the rigor and honesty of such writing, even if I haven’t been able to match those standards in my own.
The shifting nature of this blogs themes and styles has, I believe, made it more interesting, but also more difficult to understand. People arrive, wanting a summary of main points, and get upset when they contradict. This blog has never been a thesis of unchanging principles, but just the process some guy is using to figure things out and writing it down along the way.
Yet despite the changes, I don’t want to go back and edit, rewrite and compile. Not only would that be prohibitively laborious, but it would also be disingenuous. My writing might have fewer mistakes, but it would also imply that I’m writing outside of time, so I leave the posts and the past unchanged.
I don’t know what will change in the next thousand posts, but I’m incredibly grateful for everyone that has chosen to come along for the ride, even if just for a short time.