Prologue

Foreword to my journal and thoughts on the new age of social media and opportunities.

I'm 24 years old and like some people my age, I'm going through a quarter-life "crisis", contending all the same questions:

Who am I? What do I want to be - now and later?

What do I stand for? Where do I fit in?

What are my strengths and weaknesses? What do I seek, and what do I run from?

I've been answering these questions slowly for myself, and here's the jist of it.

I'm now done with two degrees in physics. I would say that the last one has been very successful. So I've decided that I want to try a career in writing.

That's right. There's no link between what I've done so far and what I want to do. But that's how everybody who I've told this to, sees it. I've been realizing that society values the degree far more than it values the education or "experience" that it provides. And it values least what I personally value the most - education as a period for self-discovery. More on all of that later.

"What kind of writing do you plan on doing?"

Perhaps some form of journalism. Perhaps creative writing. Perhaps social commentary.

Perhaps all of those. I'm in no hurry to find the answer to this question. This is mainly because of my privileges, which I'll talk about in a separate post, but also because of the way I've grown over the last three years. I am going to start sharing about those experiences now.

But first, a foreword.

Yesterday I was setting up this blog, and I was being my usual perfectionist self about it when this question suddenly hit me - "Who the fuck reads blogs these days? Maybe I should make short video clips to share ideas like everyone on social media does".

Because some of the common, healthy feedbacks I get, are:

- "Try video content, maybe Youtube"

- "Make reels"

- "Your posts are too long and intense. Create shorter ones quicker to consume".

These are valid because I'm going to try and rely on the stories I want to share, to survive. But these are hard, because (verbose) writing is my natural form of expression.

People who see me close enough know, as well as I do, that one of my major insecurities is that I am not relatable. Apart from my lifestyle, background, privileges, etc. - I constantly feel like I don't really sync with people my age. I belong to Gen Z but I somehow always feel dissociated.

This is the era of the superfast Internet. Videos, reels and heavy media are shared and used at enormous speeds and that's powerful because multisensory information is powerful. But trying to drop my anchor in this ocean as a writer, is scary to say the least. I'm fighting the tide of the times to embrace the pen, of all weapons, to give way to honest expressions that unfortunately don't "fit" into the ever shrinking box (in size and time) that content consumers expect. I feel years older than myself, brooding over the magic lost and found in a few hundred pages.

Take journalism itself. Everybody knows the existence of poisoning propaganda machines and clickbait news. But some other widely respected journalists today are celebrated for their short, crisp, unopinionated news reports. In the words of one of my good friends: "Here's this short piece of information. Now go do whatever the fuck you want to do with it." And that's precisely because everything is polarized, including the market for news: between extremely biased news and completely unbiased news. Between long essays and three-line reports.

I've started sharing here with the hope that the Internet is this place where everybody finds their audience no matter what. That's the dream. And yet I'm constantly faced with a sort of reality that this form of expression is not favoured in the space of bottomless scrolling, tap-tap-tapping of stories, back-to-back reels and tiktok videos, etc. I want to stomp my foot down and say this is what I'm going to do, like it or not, because this is the way I'd love what I'm doing. I'm open to a change in medium, but first I'll see how this goes.

Funnily enough, I also see more people fighting to keep in touch with books and other long form content. I see more people with app timers and self-imposed restrictions, going on social media "detox" times, straightening their necks every now and then and feeling actually good about it all. To them I say, "Get back into your phone and keep reading my posts." I'm kidding, of course. I love it when people take time off for themselves.

It's as if people are constantly bouncing off of these two walls so fast, while I watch with confusion from the middle. Because I might have related to people in these situations a few years ago, but now I don't. More recently, I've been able to seize a balance in my life that has been incredibly rewarding. Between time with others, and time with myself. Between my obsessions and my duties. Between being firm in what I stand for, and in keeping an open mind. But boy, have I made my fair share of mistakes, and I keep making them.

I too have a quarter life crisis, if you could say that, because I have no idea what exactly is coming up next. But I have a lot more clarity on abstract things, that give me the momentum to keep going now. And I am much more assured and confident in this period of uncertainty. Something which I simply wasn't in my first real crisis, right after my bachelor's.

I will unpack most of the things that have helped me move on from a frightening array of choices to decisions. Please keep in mind that these are ideas that worked for me. But I do feel that I've scratched the surface of some that are robust and powerful, perhaps useful to others. And because I've gained SO much from random words that people have shared on the Internet, here are my 2 cents.

Or I should say 2000. Here goes.