I have these ideas stacked up to write about. To publish on my blog. But this thought keeps pestering me: What is so unique about my opinion on this thing? People with more intelligence than I have written books and made videos on these topics. Why would my take matter?
And again, this might be Resistance talking me out of writing anything at all. But this thing has been bugging me for weeks. My opinions on politics, AI, privacy, technology—how do they matter? I would have to be a narcissist to believe the world is waiting for my "unique" take.
I think I might be asking the wrong question.
The question isn't whether my opinion is unique. It probably isn't. On almost every topic I care about, there are people who are smarter, more knowledgeable, and better at expressing themselves than I am. Whatever thought I have about AI, privacy, politics or whatever has likely been written already. Probably better too.
Maybe writing isn't about coming up with new ideas. Most ideas have been around for a while. Maybe it's just a way of working through them. A blog post doesn't have to contribute something novel. It can simply be a record of how one person arrived at a particular view.
And maybe that's the only unique part: how you got there. (Clichéd, I know.) Two people can believe the same thing and arrive at it through completely different experiences. Whether anyone finds that interesting is a separate question. But I do find that writing forces me to think more carefully. A lot of the time I don't really know what I think until I try to put it into words.
This makes logical sense, but I'm still not fully convinced. The whole thing still feels a bit self-centered to me. By my current definition, putting any of your creations out there is a form of narcissism. You're essentially saying, "Here's a thing I made. Maybe spend a few minutes of your finite life looking at it."
And maybe it is. I don't know.
What's strange is that I don't think this way when I read other people's blogs. I don't assume they think they're geniuses. I don't demand that they have a completely original thought. I'm usually just curious about what they're thinking. Yet when it comes to my own writing, the standards suddenly become much higher.
Running on low self-esteem these past few days, maybe that's all this is. Maybe in a few weeks I'll reread this and wonder why I was making such a big deal out of it. Or maybe there's something here worth thinking about. I'm not sure yet.