On writing
Random thoughts on a personal return to something meaningful
I feel the need to write again.
It’s been a while since I last did it, and I can feel its absence. I have this subtle sense that something’s slipping through the cracks. So I’ve decided to start writing again—my own way—to exhale just a bit of what I constantly inhale.
I’ve always loved writing, ever since high school. Probably—and I’m not introspective enough to say this with certainty—it has always been a way for me to express a certain critical spirit about things. In the past, I’ve written about geopolitics, economics, actual topics and later on, technology. Short essays, a few papers—nothing particularly groundbreaking—but still, a constellation of small reflections on the world around us. Then I stopped. I stopped writing, and I’m not even sure why. It’s not like I used to write a lot, but I wrote now and then. Then, all of a sudden: silence.
Maybe the main reason is that I got swept up in the brutal logic of hyper-productivity, and I stopped making space for an old-fashioned practice—one that’s hard to maintain because it requires both time and mental space. And in a world where our time is colonized by screens and displays, we feel like we no longer have either.
(I’m writing this from my phone, and a ladybug just landed on the screen—hopefully a good omen for what lies ahead.)
Returning to writing serves several personal needs:
To release at least a part of all the information, reflections, and thoughts I absorb. When you inhale a lot, sooner or later you need to exhale—and for me, writing is the best way to do that right now;
Writing strengthens logical coherence. And in a time when logical chaos reigns, coherent thinking is a superpower;
Nobody writes anymore, and most of those who still do use AI to do it. Writing today is a contrarian and right move—and “contrarian and right” often leads to meaningful results;
Writing demands time and generates intense neural activity. At a moment in history when our free time is being eaten up by low-intensity stimulation, writing helps redirect our attention and a significant portion of our thinking toward something constructive;
Writing stretches time, at least for me. And right now, time feels like it’s constantly slipping away;
Writing can be boring sometimes. But boredom is a rare currency today—and it’s often from boredom that the best thoughts emerge;
We’re overwhelmed by impersonal, identical content. So I’ll risk the presumption of thinking I have something personal and different to say.
I started writing this on my phone. I’m finishing it on a computer—two form factors that already smell like the past and that I believe will be outdated in the next decade. Maybe one day, not too far from now, we’ll go back to writing with pen and paper, or perhaps we’ll write with our thoughts through neural interfaces and AI assistants. The form factor will change, but the act of translating, reorganizing, formalizing, and clarifying our thoughts—that will always retain its extraordinary revelatory power.
As Derek Thompson said in his first post on Substack: “Sometimes it’s the things we write just for ourselves that make the deepest impression.”