Awkward silence

It's day two of my daily blogging experiment, and I don't know what to write about. I knew this point would come, but I didn't expect it so early in the process. Right now, it feels like in the beginning of a conversation, where we have exchanged our opening pleasantries, and an awkward silence just crept in. You know this silence. It's the point where we start desperately to look for a topic to hold onto. Because if we don't find anything, it's time to admit that this conversation ended before it started. This silence is where the magic happens. But it's also the most uncomfortable moment in a conversation.

And just like in a conversation, the problem of finding a topic isn't about the topic in itself. It's about finding a common ground to connect over. Let's take a conversation with a friend I met at university. We both studied computer science, so when we meet, we can talk about side projects we are working on, or some areas we looked into recently. If all else fails, we can fill the void with fanboying over Rust. It's such a great programming language, for its Enums alone. I love it! Anyway, I'm digressing.

If I would try to talk with my brother about similar topics, I know the reaction I would get. Crickets. He doesn't care about programming, so he isn't able to appreciate the beauty of Rust's type system. And that's fine. We have different topics to talk about. This is the dilemma I'm facing with writing. While there are many things I could write about, I don't know what the common ground is with you, oh immaculate reader that doesn't yet exist. It's the equivalent of the awkward silence in a conversation, filled with a tension and uncertainty, whether it will be overcome.

So, how is this moment of silence overcome? In a conversation, one simple way is to just start rambling about the first thing that comes to your mind. Anything that sticks and develops into a topic is fine. It doesn't matter what it actually was, as long as you both find it engaging. If you don't find anything after several attempts it's fine to let go and come up with ideas on how to exit this situation as gracefully as possible. In writing, the dynamic is different.

When you don't want to read something, there's no tension in simply ignoring it. And I don't mind that what I write will be ignored by most people. It wasn't written for you then. Still, the question is, how to find an audience, somebody who cares. This question is such a black box for me, something I have ignored rigorously since I started this blog (This problem isn't solved by just sharing your work on social media).

Obviously I want to write something that adds value to you, the reader. But I don't know who you are. In a conversation, I could do some probing to come up with something to talk about. I don't know how to do this in writing. I know of some approaches, like picking a genre to communicate as clear as possible what to expect. I played around with a couple ideas for a genre and I didn't like any of them for different reasons. But if you have read until here, you might already be in my audience, and what I write may be more interesting than I think it is. If so, that's great, thanks for checking out my blog. Please, send me a mail with suggestions what you would like to hear from me. If not, just go the toilet, look for something to drink, or fake to receive a phone call. You know, do whatever it is you do when you don't want to say "I really don't want to talk to you."