My Five Year Plan

Five years ago, I was finishing up my undergraduate Journalism degree when the pandemic hit. My plan to move to the city and become a writer evaporated before my eyes as my industry collapsed and the appetite for confrontational writers diminished. I was scared to write about what was going on in the world, because in those months after I graduated, it was scary to say anything you meant if it hadn’t already been effigiated and paraded through the streets. This was back when canceling felt like a real threat before we realized its teeth were rotted. I could have been brave, but I was scared, and when I’m scared or upset, I turn to code.

Code has been my security blanket since I got into making more than HTML static sites in my junior year of undergrad. I had an internship making a digital circular, and as depressed teenagers do, I could barely get my thoughts in order most days. But, when I was writing code my thoughts were clear. I could get into a flow state and stay there. It was a respite from the storm of my mind through which I was able to overcome my depression and find a way to enjoy life again.

Now, five years later, I have achieved more than I ever thought possible through code. I have a job where I write it, successful open source projects people use and appreciate, and I’m learning new and exciting things every day. But I don’t think it’s everything. I never lost my love for writing, and though I’ve been away from it for some time now, I’d like to start back up again and take a shot at posting regularly.

The problem with going through journalistic training is that it only teaches you one kind of writing. The news story. Give me an event and some people to talk to and I’ll give you a sharp beat you could put in any paper, but when it comes to writing for myself, I’m as lost as a puppy. Writing for yourself requires knowing yourself whereas writing journalistically requires taking yourself out of the story as much as possible. We were told to not use first-person pronouns and to only address the viewer in the third-person–I was partial to the pronoun “one”. We had budgets–which are essentially boards telling us what we had to write about before deadlines, and editors, and a business to think of. People we had to interview and sources we had to parse for objectivity and reasonability. All of this to say, it wasn’t about us–and still shouldn’t be. But when you’re trained for years to only write like that, it’s hard to code switch into writing about yourself or even talking about things that aren’t that newsworthy. If you hunt around to find the smattering of writing I’ve published in the last five years, it’s not hard to see the newsman behind the curtain.

I just want to write something because though my code will outlive me, it will not be me. I cannot express my feelings or connect with you through variables and loops. It takes writing in a language we share to really preserve my thoughts and feelings. I love reading personal blogs. They’re the future of literature because they are simply human. No publishers, no editors, just unfiltered personalities detached from external manipulation. You can’t get that on social media. It’s why my favorite app on my iPad is my RSS reader. I want to join in on the fun of publishing our shared stories for anyone to see on the real open web, but I’m still struggling with that fear even though I know it’s silly considering what I do on other parts of the internet. That’s why for now I’m going under a pseudonym. Maybe in the future I’ll be more open about who I am, but amidst the tumultuous times we live, perhaps it’s best that I say what I mean in this way.

My five year plan is to be more fearless. To break the trend of fear holding my back in my own life and say what I meant to the people I mean to. I don’t want to be forgotten, and I want to hear your stories. I need to step out into the world and make my life exactly as I intend it without letting anyone or anything stop me. I need to make my choices and live with them. I need to be decisive, brave, and strong beyond all else.

This is my first step.