Why I’m starting a blog — and you should too.

I can’t believe I’m doing this.

I’ve always had a mild disdain for online bloggers. Not a hatred — that’s too strong of a term. Reading Neil Patel’s latest ALL CAPS “just do it” to his following of aspiring entrepreneurs would leave a slight sting. Reading personal blogs, I’ve found, is very much like drinking a cup of coffee that’s just a little too hot. It tastes delicious going down, but leaves your mouth dry, tacky, and a whole lot less certain of itself.

Now before the gods of Medium come raining down from hell, let me qualify what I just said. There are some blogs I LOVE (thank you Ben Thompson, Nate Silver, etc.), and I subscribe to dozens of email lists that are no more than mobile blogs that make it all the way to my inbox. There is more content than ever before, and any idiot like me can spin up a personal blog in under 30 minutes to start spraying their ideas into the world. It’s glorious; it’s freeing; it’s the democratization of information! It’s also self-indulgent, distracting, and mildly narcissistic.

So WHY would I ever start my own blog? Is it because I find my insights *cough cough* so brilliant that the world simply needs to know? Is it that I love typing words into a keyboard and watching Medium effortlessly format them into a work of art? Is it because I wanted an excuse to tag two of my analytical idols online and hope they notice? No, a little, and absolutely yes. But the biggest reason: I was recently inspired by a quote.

“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

In fact, I cannot know what I think until I am forced to express it. So here I am — thinking and recursively thinking and recursively thinking and expressing it for anyone (and especially me) to read.