I love reading what’s been written by others. You see a unique voice in between the lines that you read, and everybody has their own way of sharing a slice of them for the world to see. I’m inspired by writers who found a way to break out of prose—to write in a flowery way that, usually, just so happens to also be so emotionally raw. I wonder if I’m able to reflect a bit of that in my writing, to discover how to bridge the emotions to the text.

But I don’t think it’s as easy as that, though. Growing up, I’ve been taught to write in rigid structures of text. In primary school, there’s a section in our English writing exams aptly named situational writing—even looking at the name now suggests how formal it feels. Given a particular scenario, typically representing a comic-like presentation of a sequence of events or a poster for an event to write about, we’re tasked to write a story about it. Even though there’s some degree of creativity, there’s still the expectation of rigidity in there: there’s a format that you’re supposed to follow to earn the most marks.

In secondary school, it’s slightly worse: one common form of situational writing is to write a reply, usually to a letter, report, email, or speech, that suits the purpose, audience, and context of the situation given. I remember being confused at why there’s a need to remember the date-address-salutation order when replying to a letter and whether to use “yours truly” or “yours sincerely”.

To me, that systematic approach to writing only produces a rigid form of prose that makes it feel difficult to feel genuine, especially if you’re writing from your corner of the internet and am writing for yourself to show yourself to the world.

The emotional approach to writing is one that speaks out to me more, because it feels like a more truer way of expressing yourself. Not caring much about how the end results will look like and embracing the many changes along the way feel contradictory to the systematic and orderly method I’ve been brought up with.

In truth, I’ve probably started to write in this emotional manner back in secondary school. Just imagine that I was really going through it emotionally (teenage upbringing yada yada), and I really needed a place to vent. My English teacher was particularly helpful in that—she even offered to read what I’ve jotted down, and I found that writing turned to be my safe avenue of letting things out at that point in time. I broke free from the “figure the structure then write” method and just went with what I was feeling. Not only did writing it made my pen look more worn that it actually is, it actually really felt good to write like that.

Reading widely, refining taste

In a conversation with a friend one day, I asked how he come across the right people that vibe with what he likes to read, and I was interested to know about how he started doing so to begin with. I really like his well-curated list of content that he’d occasionally share from time to time. Feels a little bit like that travelling merchant you see in those games—always coming at the right time with gems of things and information you never knew you needed.

It was through him that I came across more of these kinds of writings that feel like they’re more than just words in a post. Before that, I was already interested in some projects that other people have made (okay fine, maybe just like one particular group of people). There was something alluring about how how they’re written—and in general, how they’re presented.

I used to always describe these and shrug them off as “poetic writing”. Something I definitely wanted to hone in my craft, but I always “never found the time or opportunity to”. I think, up till this day, that’s been as lousy a justification could ever be, an excuse not to venture a little bit deeper into how I write.

Of course. What’s there to soul-search if you really haven’t seen the options you have yet? Feels obvious at first sight, but it really unveiled how I approached reading in general. To me, reading felt more like an activity: one of actively churning through words, underlining stuff, recording stuff down. But what of the emotional parts of it? What about different kinds of writing, especially one of people being open and honest?

Where to start?

I’m trying to start widening my exposure to writing. I found that Substack is such a nice place to start, and many of the pieces I’ve come across—both on my own and those shared by my friends—all come from the different writers who express themselves through Substack. It’s kinda like one of those platforms that enables everyone to have their own blogs, like the good ‘ol Blogger back in those days (I’m not that old).

It’s only when I start reading more will I know what I prefer reading. I need to refine this “poetic writing” description that I use for the kind of writing that I love reading, and understand what about them specifically I enjoy. Is it the use of flowery language in it? The association and tying back to personal experiences? Being raw and vulnerable, sharing intimate memories with the world?

I recently found out that I get easily overwhelmed with walls of text at a time. Especially one with flowery language, I realised that the more deeper words tried to explain things, the more I felt like I was drowning in them. I’m not used to reading such writing, so I think it’s fair enough that I’d react in such a way. Not a justification; merely an observation.

I don’t think that reading more slowly necessarily helps me ingest what I’m reading better. It’s similar to that feeling when you’re reading a line over and over again, in different speeds and voices, but you’ll only get to understand it once you unironically lock in with your focus. I think to properly read, you need to be in the right headspace to do so.

But what does “the right headspace” mean? How do I figure that out?

Balancing technical details and emotion

When I started this blog, there was this dissonance when it comes to thinking how I wanted this blog to sound. On one hand, I really loved the idea of sharing technical details about projects that I’m working on. At the same time, I don’t want it to be just that—I personally much prefer to also see and understand the person behind the engineer, so how can I make something that feels just right in the middle of that?

I’m still figuring out the direction this blog is heading towards, but I like that it feels like an in-between between technicality (like setting up my Raspberry Pi) and purely emotional and human-level writings (like what it felt like between secondary school and polytechnic). Tags bring some form of separation, though they also aren’t enough to completely compartmentalise them apart from each other.

Intrinsically there’s a part of me that goes this is horrible horrible horrible every time I look at the state of my blog. It feels weird, like who would write something that’s personal and meaningful to them while also having some other pieces that are just technical how-tos and CLI commands? It’s slightly off-putting to have two completely different forms of writing that don’t really mix well with each other, I dunno. But at the end of the day, I think I’m comfortable with doing something like this. I feel like I want my blog to be some place that’s a little bit of everything, albeit messy—the experiences of the lives I’ve gone through, the technical knowledge and sharing of “hey, I did this and it worked!”, and also the little rambling here and there from time to time.

The more I’m working on this post the more I’m doubting whether it was even a good decision to begin with to build my own blog. There are places to blog that are more than just making your words live for everyone to see. Substack, an example I mentioned earlier, is also a community of writers who frequently interact with each other through likes, reposts, and comments. Heck, even something like Wordpress is built exactly for blogging, with many of the social aspects of blogging that I so wish to capture.

But again, I’ve worked hard in building this blog even at its (kinda) basic state. It’s something nice to put out there. So I guess you could say that on a technical standpoint, I’m also having a dilemma of paths to go down: join the warm cottage in the cold forest (Substack/Wordpress/etc.), or to choose my own path and continually build this blog from scratch.

Thanks for reading! :)