michael-dean-k/

On reading Montaigne, I want my writing to be far more honest. As in, in the face of death, it really does feel worthwhile to capture the edges of your soul and psyche onto the page, the things not brewed into your public-facing personality, because then you die with yourself trapped, and it’s as if the inner you never really lived.

After reading the first 3 years of Cassidy's letters (the letters from the real-life Dean Moriarty), I find myself questioning who I am, the impossibility of anyone else being able to reveal that to me, and how I have to really be honest with myself to know it; I think this all while staring at the ceiling—as one does when trying to figure out impossible things—and I’m struck by the unfamiliarity of the stucco, plaster, or whatever you call it (I am outing myself as an architect who is illiterate in some absolute basics of building construction). It reminds me of my uncle’s old condo in Utah—the one I went to every President’s Week for a ski trip, the one we stopped by on that disastrous road trip. I wonder if western ceilings have thicker textures, more noticeable by the gradient hues of an uplight. Any time you travel, unless you are camping, a ceiling is the first surface to greet you, the white sky you never notice, with as many grains as stars if you’d care to count (this sentence tries too hard, but there’s something in it). I think all this thinking about ceilings is probably a distraction from the alienation I feel towards myself. Alone in SF. I mean, I could reach out to everyone (and maybe I will on Wed/Thu). This is likely over-dramatic, and likely due to being alone in a new city, but I do sense that all my recent focus on building software this year, as utterly exciting as it is, has distanced me from finding the soul in my own writing.

My logs need to become much more unhinged. I should hold back nothing and write from the perspective of death, as if every moment is fragile and fleeting and if you don’t speak honestly, in full force, with damning truth and judgement and acceptance, revealing all, then I'm betraying my own soul. The dead don’t check their metrics. The dead don’t hold grudges. If your main imperative is anything other than rendering your own consciousness, then you don’t see through the illusion of time. If you write for what you think the Substack Notes crowd wants to hear, then you are polluting your post-death corpus with drivelous digital small talk.

A "stabilizing fiction" is when the controller tells a lie to controlled to maintain order and spirit. Think about XMAS as a stabilizing fiction between parents and kids. Think about democracy as a stabilizing fiction between rulers and the ruled.

Marketing emails from software comes across to me like polite begging. The desperation is veiled. They speak in modern idioms, wishing my family well while using exclamation points. Email broadcasting is already unnatural, and so instead of pretending to masses with the pleasantries of a 1:1 coffee date, have the courage to be yourself.

And isn’t “being yourself,” the thing a company can’t be? It’s inherently not a self, but a conglomerate. Who is speaking? Who is “team”? A more honest way is to “share the process,” to give people the glimpse of what it’s like in a company. But still, I think there’s something corrupting about letting a market dictate your decisions.

Of course, that’s what venture requires. But we’re entering a paradigm where software can be so easily made, that all of our ratios can flip. Someone can make tools for themself. If I’m making a tool for myself, I can not only show you the process of making tool, but the things my tool makes. That’s the ultimate proof. I don’t want to just share screenshots of text-editor features and shill you benefits; I just want to share the fruits.

If the founder isn’t actively engaged in the product, then why should we believe them? And so, that might be how to make a niche products long-term sustainable. Serve yourself, and let the small selection of overlapping others have access to it.

The word “diary” implies a space of personal recollection and non-judgment. There is no right or wrong. It has one job, it’s a mirror. Now Rubin says:

“Everything we make can be [a diary], a personal reflection of who we are, in that moment of time. It doesn’t have to be the greatest you can ever do. It doesn’t have to have any expectation that it can change the world. It doesn’t have to sell a certain number of copies for any reason. It doesn’t have any of things. All it has is: I’m making this thing for me, and I want to do it to the best of my ability, to where I feel good about it, and it’s honest, honest of where I’m at.”

Is editing dishonest?

I resonate the idea with purging the chorus of false reasons (greatness, impact, sales) … but if you want to do something “to the best of your ability,” does that not imply the recursive act of looking at your work and judging it? I actually think self-criticism is one of the hardest and most honest things you can do.

Judgment is a profound force. It shouldn’t be your primary lens to reality, but it is an indispensable razor into the truth, and it’s something we ought to be grateful for: our whole society is built on it.