There are many reasons these posts have been valuable to me. Yes, they are giving me an alternative outlet for what used to be Tweets. But the forcing mechanism to do a lot of this thinking out loud has also made me better at interviewing (I think — honestly, until I land my next role, that could just be fantasy). Whether or not I’m actually better at it, I know that my answers have been more concise and more thoroughly thought through because most of the time, I’ve drafted some sort of first draft in one of these posts.
At this point, there are more than 50,000 words in four months’ worth of notions and ideas which were basically just scribbles in a notebook before they got a little more solidified here. To quote John Dickerson from this week’s episode of the Slate “Political Gabfest,” “Nothing sharpens the mind better than organized thinking, which is what writing is.” This organized thinking helps me take the ideas in my head and try to form them into a coherent narrative, so I can tell you (or — maybe — more accurately, a me in the future) the first draft of a story which may still need some tweaking, but has the essential elements of a point I can build upon and make better in the future. For instance, today while prepping for an interview, I wanted to highlight something I know I had mentioned here before. So, I looked it up, used part of that post as a first draft, and then honed it even more to make it more specific to the role and company I was talking to today. I’ll let you know if it leads to something more.
As I look at the dwindling number of remaining Soundgarden song names I’m using to power the titles of these, I’m starting to think about what’s next for this blogging exercise. I don’t want to give up on the readily available access I have created for ideas I want to take with me to interviews and my next employer. But the usefulness of these needs to be more than just a place for me to think out loud, mostly to myself. Right? It’s all starting to feel a little navel-gaze-y. However, I still have ideas I want to explore here, and I know that news events and emerging technology and musical discoveries will always turn the gears in my head. What I do with all that kinetic energy is still an open question, though.
The Telephantasm
03 March 2023
Day thinking.
There are many reasons these posts have been valuable to me. Yes, they are giving me an alternative outlet for what used to be Tweets. But the forcing mechanism to do a lot of this thinking out loud has also made me better at interviewing (I think — honestly, until I land my next role, that could just be fantasy). Whether or not I’m actually better at it, I know that my answers have been more concise and more thoroughly thought through because most of the time, I’ve drafted some sort of first draft in one of these posts.
At this point, there are more than 50,000 words in four months’ worth of notions and ideas which were basically just scribbles in a notebook before they got a little more solidified here. To quote John Dickerson from this week’s episode of the Slate “Political Gabfest,” “Nothing sharpens the mind better than organized thinking, which is what writing is.” This organized thinking helps me take the ideas in my head and try to form them into a coherent narrative, so I can tell you (or — maybe — more accurately, a me in the future) the first draft of a story which may still need some tweaking, but has the essential elements of a point I can build upon and make better in the future. For instance, today while prepping for an interview, I wanted to highlight something I know I had mentioned here before. So, I looked it up, used part of that post as a first draft, and then honed it even more to make it more specific to the role and company I was talking to today. I’ll let you know if it leads to something more.
As I look at the dwindling number of remaining Soundgarden song names I’m using to power the titles of these, I’m starting to think about what’s next for this blogging exercise. I don’t want to give up on the readily available access I have created for ideas I want to take with me to interviews and my next employer. But the usefulness of these needs to be more than just a place for me to think out loud, mostly to myself. Right? It’s all starting to feel a little navel-gaze-y. However, I still have ideas I want to explore here, and I know that news events and emerging technology and musical discoveries will always turn the gears in my head. What I do with all that kinetic energy is still an open question, though.
See you tomorrow?