Hey, world. This is my new blog.

I've wanted to start writing for several years now. But my fear has held me back. I'm a normal human, so fear of rejection — no-one reading or caring — is part of it. But, more importantly, my fear of hating it in the future has held me back.

I recently uncovered an external hard drive that contains a lot of old songs I recorded in my late high-school, early college years. I was physically uncomfortable listening back to it, not because of a lack of skill in my own playing, but because a lot of the lyrics were terrible. And, to make it worse, I'm fairly certain I remember thinking they were pretty clever at the time. Eventually I wrote a few songs that I'm still proud of today, but those were not on this drive.

I mentioned this to a friend yesterday and they likened it to rereading their own code from early in their software development career. I think most developers will tell you, even if their old code works "good enough", it's still quite painful to read.

The naiveté inherit in starting a new skill is beautiful in a way. You are excited, so you do the thing. You don't know enough to know it's terrible (some psychologists have also noticed this). But, you don't realize it's terrible until you know how to do it better. This gap between actual and perceived experience can give space to let new skills and hobbies flourish before wilting under self-doubt.

Today, I'm letting this idea give me courage to hit publish for the first time. Maybe I'm naive, maybe it's not bad, maybe it's both.

Thanks for reading.

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One of my good friends, Daniel, has an excellent weekly newsletter. It brings me joy every time a new entry show up in my inbox and I recommend checking it out.