Why I'm Building in Public (And You Should Too)

First off, hello hello! Welcome to Signal & Space.

As you may no doubt have read, this is my (Edward) personal site where I will be exploring intentional work, analog living and what it means to have a sustainable business. I will be exploring all of this primarily through writing. I will be adding photos and possibly (eventually?) videos to go along with some of these explorations.

We all have goals when we start and I have learned that along the way that often times our business or ideas completely change as soon as we start doing them. Who knows what will happen!

Laptop stickers are coming in nice 👌🏼

The biggest thing here is, after years of talking about how I am going to become a writer, I am actually doing it. This is it, or at least the start of my writing. I hope this is a practice I continue to do for months, years even. I hope I write a book, then another and another. I would kind of laugh if I end up being a NY times best seller because I finally stopped dragging my feet and finally started writing.

The 6 month experiment

My initial commitment to myself is to write for 6 months. Write daily, publish weekly and monthly (depending on if it’s for Clearings or Field notes). I’ll write about what I am up to, things I am trying and generally explore my ideas through writing. I’ll also write short story snippets or start outlining different ideas for books as well. Those wont be shared here, but in general, I just need to write and write a lot.

There is no substitution for doing the work. There is no substitute for writing.

Inspiration

Some of my inspiration for all of this writing is coming from folks such as Craig Mod and Kai Brach. Both writers that I have been following and reading their work for many years at this point. I am not aiming to copy them, but I do like the approach they take. Long form thoughtful content focused on their own spaces.

My other inspiration is that I want to document this journey. How it goes. What works, what doesn’t work. Most of this documentation is for myself, so I can look back in a few years and laugh and hopefully see how much my writing has progressed. But also as a possible inspiration of someone else on the outside who is looking at this and themselves may be on the fence for many years like I have been.

This is building in public, but not in the gross way where its a thin veil for bragging about how good your business is doing and how little you tried. There will be no "I farted and my app made 10k MRR overnight" type of stories here because come one, we all know thats either a scam, a one off monthly fluke or straight up lies.

I also want to go against the grain here a bit. I hear how blogs are dying, how AI is replacing everything and how content is essentially a waste of time. Why pay a human to do something when you can outsource it to AI right? Fuck all of that. Some of the best ideas I have come across were found by me through an obscure way. I cant pinpoint exactly when I came across Craig’s, or Kai’s or Rosie’s writing - but I know after reading their initial work and many after that I got exactly what I was looking for, even though I didn’t know I was looking for it.

This perspective, motivation, encouragement, adventure, laughs or frankly just reading about someone’s journey is so decisivly human. I don’t believe any AI will ever replace that, no matter how close it may sound. There ultimately is no replacement for the human experience.

Closing thoughts

I guess what I am trying to say here is I hope to look back on this writing and this moment in a few years and say I am glad I started doing this and finally started writing consistently.

Best case scenario? This will change my life in ways I cant even imagine.
Worse case scenario? Not much happens, but I become a much better writer.

What a win-win.

—
Edward

PS. With each field note im going to include a few image from the day or from around the work week.

Water + Topo Chico Lime - keeps me going all day

The roses, trees and flowers are finally starting to come in. Nothing beats working outside for mental health.