Retiring my inner journalist
In my first post, I shared how I moved here. Now, surrounded by unpacked boxes, I’m ready to delve into them. Each box, labeled and color-coded, holds a piece of my past and visions for the future—plans that, despite the chaos of moving day, hint at the new internet landscape would love to help shape.
In my former life I was a journalist, and the media business is straightforward. An event happens – a revelation, a scandalous remark – and there’s your story. Publishing the story is just the beginning; the real work is to unearth more stories linked to the original. New angles, new facts, new voices. Before the internet, this cycle stretched over days, maybe one story a day. Now, stories are churned out within hours.
An essential criterion for these stories is novelty. The goal is to always write something to bring something novel to the table, to write something that hasn't been written before. This means, the value of my work was largely measured by the novelty of my stories.
Here, I'm writing primarily for myself, and these standards don't apply. Yet, the journalist in me lingers, challenging me. My first impulse is still to check my ideas for novelty. If it's been said before, my motivation to write vanes. It's a weird form of procrastination, but that's how I usually end up not writing what I intend to write.
You have served me well, dear journalist, but now it's time for you to retire. I know you've just come out of your box – but now, I'd like to go my own way. Points to the door
I want to write freely about what's on my mind, without fretting over whether it's useful or novel. Who cares if some concept already has a name I'm unaware of? I'm discussing it because it matters to me, and likely, my reasons are distinct from others – and that alone makes it unique enough.