Unfinished Conversations

Here’s a little letter to the people that read this blog.

Hi! Can I just say that it sucks to fail in public? Not to fail, but to disappoint.

Not to disappoint you, because assuming that I (or my work) could take up enough space in your life to do that is both delusional and very self-indulgent. No, I mean disappointing myself.

Backstory: March was a big month for me because I hit one whole year of consistent blog writing. At the same time, I also finally took on a lot of professional writing work (aka, jobs). 

This had me writing many, many words for many, many hours of the day. In my free time, it somehow pained me to write some more words and pretend like I was doing it for fun.

I decided it was necessary to pause my personal writing project for a month, despite my own disappointment, to evaluate whether it was feasible to keep going. Turns out, I felt pretty crappy at the thought of abandoning it. This little corner of the internet really means something to me, despite how painstaking it is to maintain.

When I started this blog, I said I was going to write for myself. A noble and nearly impossible goal. If something banal interested me, I wrote 3000 words about it. I didn’t check the metrics. I didn’t write more of what “did well.” And I didn’t feel bad about putting my heart and soul into something that only 3 other people connected with. Not because I don’t care about my readers. I care deeply about every single person that has engaged with my writing.

I wrote for myself because it helped me cultivate a sense of personal taste. I got to explore my likes and dislikes and watched them evolve over time. I had the freedom to form opinions and then change them without worrying about appearing stupid. And the fact that I had people reading along through this whole process was humbling. I’m genuinely so grateful for it.

That’s why abandoning these Unfinished Conversations doesn’t feel like the right decision. But the fact is I can’t give it as much time or headspace as I did last year. So instead, I’ve chosen to lower the bar for myself. I’ve given myself the permission to write badly if I’m tired. To write pointlessly if I’m bored. Write mediocre-ly if I have nothing else to offer.

Now this doesn’t mean that you have to give me the permission to do any of those things, i.e. you don’t have to read my nonsense. 

I’m choosing consistency with the hope that it will help me achieve quality with less effort. You know, practice, perfect, all that stuff. I’m hoping that if I stay consistent, I’ll a) honor the commitment I made to myself when I started this, b) get better at writing good stuff with less time and effort, and c) become a multi-millionaire and quit my job to do this full-time.

It feels odd to over-explain myself to people on the internet to whom I owe nothing. Yet to say that is dishonest. I don’t feel like I owe you nothing. The whole point of creating something, anything, is to decide you owe it to the world. Does the world care about this grand declaration? No. But in deciding that YOU care, if you’re lucky, you’ll eventually find a few others that care too. And if those people choose to give you their precious time and attention, you do owe them something in return.

So – in case some of my future essays are straight up bad and I waste your time, now you know why. Thank you and I’m sorry and I love you. In case some of them are decent, yay! And in case this entire section of intrusive thoughts turns out to be something I cringe at a couple of months later, it means I’ve grown up a little. And growing up in public is the worstttt but that’s show business, folks.

Yours truly with a side of side hugs and forehead kisses.

Now onto this week’s mini-essay

The algorithmic overlords know I have a toddler at home. My Instagram reels are like 60 percent baby content and 40 percent Taylor Swift and I’m honestly not sure how to feel about this particular cocktail of chaos.

Somewhat loosely tied to the whole spiel earlier: This essay is about cultivating good taste, and why it takes actual effort. And why I ought to do it anyway. (Ans: because it’s v imp)

The other day I saw a reel about reading to toddlers and how they flip through each page before you have the chance to get to the second line. Someone once told me that instead of letting them just jump from one page to the next, you have to encourage them to stick to it. Show them something interesting on the page. Help them build the ability to focus.

The idea that you could nurture and cultivate a sense of interest and focus was fascinating to me. I tried it with my daughter, and it worked. It worked really, really well. Except it occurred to me in the process of teaching her focus, that my consumption habits had become very similar to that of a scatter-brained toddler.

I don’t have much downtime these days – which is also why I had slowed down on writing for my personal blog – but if I’m being very uncomfortably honest, I’d say it has more to do with being lazy. And by lazy, I don’t mean, Oh I should be writing, but instead I’m scrolling through Instagram reels kind of lazy.

No. This laziness is far worse.

Because I’ve been busy, I’ve been using the little downtime I have to reward myself with low-effort, mindless scrolling, designed to keep me engaged but ultimately unfulfilled. It’s a vicious cycle. I haven’t been cultivating my interests or refining my taste. Meaning – the time I could spend engaging with meaningful ideas, or just anything of substance in the world – I spend on shallow consumption.

Stuff that’s easy but not enriching.

This seriously impacts my ability to write. Good writing comes from good ideas, and good ideas come from good thinking. And good thinking takes work. It takes nurturing. It takes filling your brain with substance, and giving yourself time to process it. It takes empty-space and big-exhales. It takes EFFORT. A mind-numbing stream of vapid entertainment impacts your ability to accomplish any of those things.

It’s easy to blame social media for my fragmented focus. But the real issue lies not in the abundance of media but in my own reluctance to sift through it and decide what truly matters to me. That’s where the laziness bit comes in. Taste and creativity feed off each other in a symbiotic loop. Developing taste involves seeking out high-quality inputs, which in turn fuel your creative outputs. 

I don’t actually like scrolling through Instagram. I don’t think anyone will say they do, we all know it’s brain rot. We all collectively agree that we want to do it less. But that means finding something else to do, and realizing that that something else actually takes more effort to enjoy.

There’s a pervasive myth that enjoyment should be effortless, that anything requiring work or focus isn’t worth the trouble if you’re looking to “have fun.” This belief is seductive because it promises instant gratification without the inconvenience of exertion. But it’s misleading. While some forms of enjoyment can be effortless, many of the most rewarding activities involve time and effort. Writing, unfortunately, is one of those things.

Figuring out what matters to me is hard

Developing taste is, in fact, an exercise in vulnerability. It’s an active process, demanding more than passive consumption. It requires the courage to say no to the entertaining dumb stuff and yes to what might genuinely resonate with you.

This whole exercise isn’t about adopting a stance of elitism or entertainment snobbery. I’m not casting judgment on anyone who spends their time on casual Instagram content. I’m as guilty of this as anyone else and I have no plans to completely abandon such habits.

This is about finding out what matters to me. Not because it’s noble, but because it’s necessary. If I don’t do that, I have nothing to write about. And sometimes, finding out what matters to you involves more than just looking inwards. You need to look outwards, engage with the world, consume other people’s ideas, critique them, and use them to make sense of your own ideas.

It’s NOT about liking smart and fancy things in order to become cool. While having taste is cool, taste itself reflects a certain type of uncool earnestness, a commitment to one’s own obsessions and quirks. There’s nothing unbothered and nonchalant about it, meaning it’s quite the opposite of being cool.

Good-handedness

So how do you know when you actually LIKE something? I read this quote, and I think it best summarizes how I feel about figuring out my preferences. The writer Mark Slutsky calls it good-handedness.

“I’ve come to trust a certain feeling that comes over me when I first make contact with a piece of art. The opening lines of a book; the first 30 seconds or so of a movie; bars of a song, etc. It is a feeling of being in good hands, an intuitive sense that the author knows what they are doing and that the experience will be worth my time. It is an exciting sensation. I am not always right, but I would say at least 80-85% I can trust my instincts.”

Developing taste involves recognizing and seeking out moments of good-handedness: that immediate feeling of reassurance that comes from trusting the writer/artist’s vision and competence.

But taking this route has its costs. It means fewer dopamine hits from quick-fix entertainment, or sitting with discomfort when something has potential but isn’t immediately captivating. Or ignoring FOMO as you opt for one quality experience over countless mediocre ones.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy

I think much of my laziness comes from a misplaced sense of generosity, where I allow myself to indulge in time-wasting as a reward for working hard. But what if I shifted this generosity towards the future, and treated the present like it truly matters?

That change in perspective is exactly why I’m continuing with my blog. Choosing to invest time in exploring ideas and figuring out what actually interests me is my version of pushing the boulder up the hill. The philosopher Albert Camus said, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” A happy Sisyphus means that there’s inherent satisfaction to be found in perpetual effort, even when it seems fruitless.

In continuing to write, I have a place where my thoughts can roam freely, where my ideas can take shape without the constraints of external validation. It’s a space where I can fail gloriously, write badly, and still find satisfaction in the simple act of creation. Like a happy little Sisyphus at work – not for the goal of perfection, not for applause, but for the simple, stubborn satisfaction of doing it anyway.