My relationship with writing
and my never-ending attempt to find the right space to write publicly
One of my earliest memories of writing was in 4th grade. We were supposed to write a “How the tiger got its stripes” type story. The idea for a story came quickly to me and I wrote it up and illustrated it. How the Japanese maple got its leaves. What I remember of it: The Chinese and Japanese were in a war, and one of the soldiers had to have his hands chopped off, but someone hung them out to dry on a tree and forgot about them. Somehow, as time passed, the bloody hands became a part of the tree, and the shape and color became how Japanese maples got their leaves.
What I recall was that my mom was called in to chat with the teacher, because she was really impressed and wanted to know if I had copied the story from anywhere. After writing it out, though, I’m now seriously reconsidering if she was concerned about how gruesome and bloody my story was.
My mom fostered my growing love of writing by encouraging me to take Creative Non-fiction classes. Last time I visited my parents, I found some envelopes from a distance writing course — before the days of Google docs, I had to send essays to an instructor by snail mail, and she would mail them back with hand-written comments, as well as the next assignment!
I also remember resisting the pressure I sometimes felt from my parents. “I’ll pay you $10 to write a story,” my dad would sometimes say. Not wanting to feel like my writing was a commodity he could buy, I usually declined with a bad taste in my mouth. The one time my brother and I took him up on the offer, we crafted a story about how he had botched the anesthetics for one of his patients and was sued for malpractice. He was not happy about that story.
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Creative writing took a backseat for many years until I entered the startup world in 2010. My first few tech-viral posts (a bit cringey to read now) were Why Chinese Mothers Aren’t Superior, a rebuttal of the Tiger Mom post by Amy Chua, and My Experiences as a Female Software Engineer (both since migrated). I remember honing an instinct for what would definitely make it to #1 on Hacker News, which I “achieved” many times. I also remember trying to pad my more personal accounts with more technical blog posts about Android development, so that I might be taken seriously as an engineer — though unsurprisingly, despite my best efforts, those posts never made it to the top of Hacker News, and comments often tended towards sentiments like “She’s always writing about gender.”
The thrill wore off, and I tired of balancing the tightrope of being a female software engineer who both wanted the external validation of viral posts and web traffic and also wanted to be taken seriously as an engineer. I considered splitting up the blog and RSS feeds.
The struggle to figure out what to write and where continued, and the idea of Medium appealed to me — so much so that I ended up working there for over 5 years. One place to publish, whatever it is I want to write. During my time there, inspired by Susan Lin’s #100daysofwatercolortrees, I embarked on #100daysofmemories, little snapshots of things I remember from my childhood and past — with no other purpose than writing and capturing them.
As I left Medium and transitioned to coaching engineering leaders, though, the purpose of my writing became more cloudy — a mix of self-expression but also striving to prove my legitimacy as an engineering leader. I remember when I sat down to write, thinking to myself, “What sort of blog post would give a VP of Engineering confidence that I would be a good coach for their engineering managers?” and steering my writing to topics such as how to navigate the chaos of re-orgs, or how to get engineers to take initiative.
My Medium profile is like a stroll through memory lane of all the different phases of my life and career and my attempts to try to fit writing into them. My hesitance to write about motherhood lest I suffer the Motherhood Penalty of decreased perceived competence. Doubling down on “engineering leadership” topics.
In the past few years, my writing has mostly lived on Co Leadership’s blog and newsletter, but even there, I felt a constant pressure to transition to a call-to-action — to sign up for the newsletter, to sign up for a workshop — or even just the pressure to tie everything back to engineering leadership.
Two years ago, as I separated from my spouse of 8 years, I started a private tinyletter, a private and personal place for close friends. It was supposed to be a place where I didn’t have to filter myself, and I could just write for me. That has petered off as well, as my need for such an outlet has faded.
This substack is the next iteration of my seemingly never-ending attempt to find the right space to write publicly. I’m optimistic about it — the insecurities and striving that I felt earlier in my career have mostly faded. As much as possible, I’ll be writing what I want to express, trying not to fall into the “well most of my subscribers are interested in X, so I shouldn’t write too much about Y” trap. I may write about technical or leadership topics, or about how things are going with my role at Range, but my intention is that it’ll be because I want to. My partner constantly reminds me that I need to take care of myself, not as an afterthought after everyone else is taken care of, but first. So, dear subscriber, that means this space will be primarily for me. But, I have an inkling that that will be more interesting for you anyways. I look forward to a writing-rich 2021.