Peanut Buttering

Day 60

Aaaand that's a wrap! My second continuous 30-day streak of publishing a blog post each day is complete. This time, I want to write a quick reflection on each of the posts in this batch, then see if there are any takeaways.

  1. It's like riding a bike
    • The unintentional beginning of these 30 days. The post was true and remained true -- I really didn't feel like writing almost any of these 30 days. But I did it anyway!
  2. Voting is hard
    • Prompted by me voting. One of the longer posts in this batch, and I feel pretty good about both the topic and my writing.
  3. Ode to the Follower
    • A poem! Fun! I intended to do more "creative" writing and this was the most creative, and also maybe my favorite, post of the batch.
  4. Subway social
    • I love the concept of this post but not sure the post itself was very interesting.
  5. "What's up" doc
    • My favorite part is the title. There's some kernel of an idea here but I don't think I understood it well myself to really write about it.
  6. Too many good ideas
    • This was really a central struggle of these 30 days. But the pressure to post did ultimately make me sacrifice many of my darlings.
  7. A breath of fresh words
    • Did not do a great job illustrating my points, which I acknowledge in the post itself. But I am glad to have tried, and at least I explain my beliefs.
  8. Forgetting
    • I nearly forgot to post, so it was only natural to write about forgetting itself.
  9. Show, don't tell
    • I really needed to write something QUICKLY. Yet as is often the case, constraints can lead to greatness.
  10. That doesn't mean what you think it means
    • This has been on the backlog a long time. Felt a little vulnerable revealing some of my social ineptitude. I had fun getting flowery (you might say purple?) with the prose at the end, like "Venusian climb" lmao.
  11. Advice I give to new people at work
    • Work post. I realized I should write more about work, as I spend a lot of time about it and it's the topic where I have the most legitimate expertise.
  12. RFC mentality
    • An old WIP draft published almost verbatim. I'm quite happy with this post.
  13. Life hacks
    • Low-effort post. But written I think late and tired, and ended up a bit more playful as a result.
  14. Hot take
    • Have been wanting to write about this take on vulnerability for a while
  15. Don't read the comments
    • This is a post I thought I wanted to write a much longer post about, but I think this shorter post still captures the core message.
  16. Stuck
    • Worst post of the 30 days? What can I say, I was stuck!
  17. Economics of art
    • Interesting concept, post is just okay IMO.
  18. Mimetics
    • Mimetics as a concept? Very interesting to me and something I think about a lot. The post? A bit meh.
  19. I bought a TV! Could this be the biggest mistake of my life?
    • I did indeed buy a TV and this tradeoff came up in conversation with someone
  20. Oops pt. 2
    • After the dramatic foreshadowing of "Forgetting", I actually forgot to write a post. Tried to recover it with a short thought taken straight from my notes app
  21. Try ketoconazole shampoo if you have dandruff
    • I was hesitant to post this because I am insecure about having dandruff. But the deadline to write a post forced me to overcome my hesitation!
  22. Broadway ticket surfing
    • This started as a review of the theatr app, which I quickly realized was boring. So I pivoted to focus on the main interesting kernel of my experience with the app.
  23. Things you should talk to me about
    • In practice I doubt that this will lead to any/many actual messages, but it makes sense in theory!
  24. Canary in the saltmine
    • I love the title. And also it was one of those important moments where you look at yourself and realize "oh no I'm wrong I'm bad"
  25. Quips
    • Low-effort post, just pulled some random comedy notes from my notes app. But I'm not doing standup right now so it's better these get out in the world I guess than languishing in my notebook.
  26. Which hours are you giving?
    • Thought of this post because I haven't been giving my best hours to my blog writing these 30 days. In fact I gave arguably my worst hours each day, usually my last hour of the day as I was tired and desperately wanted to finish the post so I could go to bed.
  27. United Airlines flight "credit"
    • Truly an insane customer service experience I had recently. For the sake of brevity I left out a bunch more annoying exchanges I had with United.
  28. In 2025 I am thankful for
    • Ironically I intended to post this on Thanksgiving but instead posted a very ungrateful diatribe against United.
  29. FW: FW: Fitness advice
    • This was nearly just a lazy linkpost to the substack article, but during writing it turned into something that actually felt useful—with some nice takeaways that really do come directly from my experiences.
  30. This post
    • A recap episode is both a sensible way to finish and avoids having to think of a topic

Takeaways #

  1. I forgot almost entirely to use section breaks like this "Takeaways" header in posts this month, which probably makes the posts harder to read
  2. I had lots of more ambitious post ideas that just had no chance of seeing the light of day under the short time I gave myself each day to write. Some, for example, required me to finally figure out how to embed images and audio in my posts.
  3. I initially thought I felt overall worse about this batch of 30 than the first batch of 30, but looking at the full 60 I think that the average quality has stayed pretty consistent. One major difference is that I included far fewer links in my posts this time. I'm not sure why this is, but I think the posts are worse as a result.
  4. I'm writing this post on an airplane as I fly to Seattle. That means compared to my previous posts I have a surplus of time, and I'm less tired than I would be when writing at the end of the day. And as a result, there's time enough for this post to contain original research (if you'll permit me to call it that. I'm explicitly citing evidence—my other posts—and discovering takeaways from it). So +1 datapoint in support of taking more time to write.
  5. It felt a lot harder to complete the streak than the first time. Again I'm not too sure why -- I don't think I was actually more short on available time than in the previous streak, I just gave less of my time to this writing. Even so, and even though I felt less internally motivated to do the work, the structure of the streak miraculously still held me accountable enough to follow through. I would have felt embarrassed if I had stopped. Apparently I now I feel I have a reputation to uphold!
  6. Compared to last time, my blog is out in the world and I know some friends and family will read it. I also link to it on my Instagram and am intending for it to be an important part of my online presence for anyone who wants to get to know who I am. As a result I noticed I feel a bit more self-conscious of how I present myself here, and worry about what people will think if I write XYZ. I actively worked to avoid self-censorship, and to post as authentically as possible, and I think I succeeded.

As always, thank you so much for reading.