Towards the end of 2021, I was feeling pretty restless. The first year and a half of the pandemic had been pretty mundane, with my favorite bars and restaurants being closed and social life being subdued. Post-vaccination, late 2021 was a hedonistic pleasure cruise of multiple trips with friends and a return to my favorite San Francisco haunts. But as the year came to a close, I felt that besides going out and enjoying life, I wanted to not just be a consumer of life but an active participant in it as well.
At the beginning of 2022, I set myself the goal of writing biweekly for the whole year. This goal was inspired by several things going on in my life.
For starters, the pandemic itself. For nearly two years, it felt like life was out of my control. Sure, there were a bunch of things that I could control like my work and my social life. But in the grand scheme of things, these felt like insignificant things in the face of lockdowns and the pandemic. During a time when so many things had been denied, I just wanted to feel like I was building something, and writing felt like the way to achieve that feeling.
At the same time, I became a much more active participant in SF YIMBY, becoming a Lead in that organization. Besides getting to know folks in the political sphere and dedicating my time to volunteering, I wanted to write in order to increase my visibility. By sharing my thoughts on politics and the city, I wanted people to know where I stand on various issues.
Finally, I was partly inspired by my career as a Product Manager. As a PM, we’re always shipping (new products) and a big part of that is not aiming for perfection, but for delivery. I wanted to continue training myself to ship quickly, even if I felt my articles could use more time and polish. But instead of shipping for work, I wanted to build for myself.
As with all things, getting started was the hardest part. In January, I set myself some fairly unambitious goals: creating my Substack account and writing my “About Me” page. I dragged my feet on those, but after completing those goals, getting really started didn’t feel like such a hurdle. I wrote my first article, a review of my favorite coffee shop in San Francisco, and then worked on a couple more before fully launching the blog to my friends.
After half a year of writing, I’ve managed to keep a fairly consistent pace of sharing a new article every 2 weeks. I was worried that I would run out of things to talk about, but from conversations and current events, topics would come up fairly regularly. What has consistently been a challenge is time. I write articles a lot faster than when I first got started, but I still find myself taking longer than I’d like. Opinion and reflection articles (like this) might take me only a couple of hours, but articles that require a bit more research may take 4-6 hours (this week’s article was originally going to be about gentrification in Mexico City, expect that one later).
At the same time, I’ve wondered whether or not my writing is too broad. I’ve talked about tech, food, urbanism, gaming, and a whole host of other topics. I know that to really grow, I should focus on a niche to tailor my content. But at least for now, I’m content with exploring a bunch of different subjects and writing for my friends.
I’m planning on continuing to write biweekly throughout the rest of this year. My hope is to not only continue delivering content that people find interesting but to improve my writing (both in terms of speed and quality). To my dedicated fans (Hi Mom!), thanks for your support and comments, and I hope you’ve been enjoying the ride ✌️.