writing blog posts is helping me talk more
So I've been writing these little posts for a few months now, with the aim of getting comfortable expressing myself in writing online. I have written some rather personal essays here to think through all kinds of things and thus really managed to push myself.
A few people have been reading this blog, maybe about a dozen people per post. (Hello dear readers, thank you for stopping by!)
However, by far the biggest (and unexpected!) change I've experienced is in how I approach conversations. I found that when the conversation shifts to something I've written about, I can now quickly voice a much more nuanced opinion. Otherwise, I often stumble through my thoughts. This has been especially noticeable in group conversations, where I otherwise spend too long formulating my thoughts and people have already moved on to another topic.
For instance, someone brought up generative AI in a conversation yesterday. I was able to formulate my thoughts on top of the communication vs self-actualization categorization that I wrote about here.
Something interesting is that before writing this blog, I have been writing private reflections. However, since these reflections were purely for me, they tended to not have a narrative and often did not elaborate on longer thoughts that I had. In addition, I feel that I enter a different mode when I write with some audience in mind (like here) versus just for myself (as in my earlier reflections). Somehow, what I write here is accessible when I talk in groups. Is it the state of being self-conscious? Or the fact that I actually think through the narrative and flow as I'm writing here? Or that I pick one idea and focus on that? I'm not sure in the end, it's likely a combination of all of these factors.
All in all, writing in this blog has turned out to be even more valuable than I expected.