This post is a ~10 minute read
A: Have you attempted to start a blog before, or is this the first time you’re diving into this?
S: I've liked the idea of having a blog/newsletter for a long time. But, you know, I've never been able to sit down and do it. I have the ideas but have the hardest time actually writing and developing all the habits of doing it. The few times I have sat down to write, I find myself filled with a sense of despair. I get caught up questioning everything. Is this too much detail or not enough? Who am I talking to here? Is it tech people? Is it friends? How general, how personal should I get? I end up in this crazy writing cycle, editing, paring down, adding more, paring down. I get to the point where I start to feel aimless. Like, what am I doing here? I ended up walking away from it.
A: You’ve decided to revisit the idea but in an atypical way. You’re implementing an interview format. What was the driving force behind that? How did you come to settle on this particular process?
S: I was interviewed not long ago by my coworker Max for a company blog post, and it was such a great experience. It was so easy to talk to Max. He was a wonderful person to work with, and I really enjoyed the process. I loved the resulting article; I was able to succinctly say a lot of the things that had been floating around my brain. It planted a seed that sprung up when I was falling asleep one day. I thought it might be odd, but what if I went about writing a blog in an interview format, and it worked? It struck me as a bit crazy and maybe somewhat unconventional. I was fascinated by the idea that this process may be just what I need to actually follow through on my long-standing desire to have a blog.
A: What was it about this process that spoke to you and made you want to experiment with it further?
S: I like how it’s a big bet on chemistry and connection. It’s all about the questions asked and how we, the interviewer and me, relate and connect. I feel like sometimes a particular person can help me process and clarify my thoughts in a way that I alone wouldn’t have. I like the idea of someone challenging me with questions that may bring something forward that I otherwise wouldn’t have touched upon. It opens different perspectives. That’s important.
I really like the way that the original article that Max wrote turned out. I’m doing a crazy number of interviews right now with candidates. I include that article in every email that I send out. People just love it! They're like, "I read that! I totally relate." And it's so nice. I love that we now have something to talk about or relate to.
It tells the person so much more about me than can be said in a 30-minute interview. It's like, you read that whole thing, you see what I went through, you say you resonate with that experience or call out a particular part. It's like, "Oh, cool!" We now have this whole thing of shared understanding about stuff that we otherwise wouldn’t have realized. I really like that.
A: When you decided to move forward with this project, what was your vision? Did your ideas gear toward your professional life and building something on that? Were you thinking of it as more for your personal life, or maybe intertwining the two?
S: All of it, really. I admire the people I see online that write mostly in their professional sphere, but they're not afraid to dive into the personal stuff. I feel those people have a real aura of authenticity about them. In terms of a professional aspect, I think this will definitely be geared toward things of the industry.
On the other hand, I feel there is no way to leave out a personal side. Maybe for some people, it's cut and dry and easy for them to divide the professional from the personal. But for me, it's so intertwined. There is a lot of overlap with my personal and professional lives in terms of relationships with other people, dealing with conflict in the workplace, dealing with stress at work and home. It all relates.
Working at companies where I felt like something was missing, and I just wasn’t happy really affected my personal life. Coming to work at Culture has been lovely. It was a decision I made about my professional life, but the process of making that decision, and in turn, the effects of that choice, were very personal.
A: What is it about Culture that makes you feel like you made the right decision? What makes you happy about working there?
S: There are several reasons, but the people there are number one. I really feel like everyone there is so kind, and it's a genuine kindness rather than a professional politeness. People are legitimately curious about each other and about what they do even outside of work. Obviously, COVID puts a big damper on actually hanging out, but I've been playing Fortnite with a few coworkers, and that's been a lot of fun. It's a social way to spend some time together and cross the boundaries of professional life. I kind of want this blog to have the same vibe.
A: This blog is helping you create a path to take your professional relationships a step further and maybe helping to blur the lines between coworker and friend even more?
S: Yeah, something I've found I enjoy in the work experience is when I feel like there was a solid personal connection with people that goes beyond the professional. In work experiences that I haven't enjoyed as much, it feels like there's a wall there. It's like, okay, we're on the same team, we joke around a little, and we're very polite. But it ends there. You go home and disappear from my life, and I disappear from yours. We'll see each other the next day or the next week, but on nights and weekends, we don't exist.
Not that I think everyone needs to be super-duper close friends with the people they work with. But I enjoy a connection that reaches beyond being merely professional. There's this sense of being something beyond work to each other. So, if you're reading this, I would like to become better friends and find even more ways to bond. That's a little scary thing to say as an adult, but yeah, definitely.
A: It’s not easy to put yourself out there, but this seems like a place to open yourself up to others.
S: Yeah, I see this as a good way for people to get to know me. I love connecting with people, but I also feel like I have a lot to say about myself and feel that can sometimes get in the way of the connection. I get self-conscious in conversations because I don't want to make it too much about me and have the interaction become too one-sided. I can go on about myself for a long time about various things. I'm into a lot of different hobbies and interests. I don't know how much people want to know, and I don't want to take up too much space in the conversation. So, maybe if you want to know more about me from afar, these might be of interest to you. They can serve as an introduction and a way to subscribe to me. It’s a way to get to know me and maybe find something relatable, or perhaps I open your eyes to something new. Ideally, it will do both.
A: What do you think is essential to know about you?
S: What am I going to say about myself? What's important for people to know? I don't know yet. That’s kind of the whole point of this. I’m hoping this interview process will help bring out more than what I feel goes on the About Me page. I have a hard time writing those types of files. What am I? Who am I? Am I boxing myself in? How do I present myself to others? Am I presenting a facade? I don't know. I like to think everyone's super multifaceted, and there's no way to really explain any one person in their totality.
A: You could ask five different people in a person's life about them, and you're going to get five different answers. It's all relevant.
S: Yeah, exactly.
A: You are hoping this will serve to get yourself out there in a way that's not so standard, cut and dry, and connect with people in the process.
S: Yeah, yeah! I want to follow the process and see where it takes me. And I like the idea of allowing room for people to decide for themselves what's essential to know about me or who I am based on these interviews' content. Hopefully, it will open up new relationships in the process.
Something that I've been working to narrow in on over this last year is connecting with people. I love doing that. It's a lot of fun. This blog is another possible way for me to do that in my life. In this big interview process, I’m in the middle of conducting; I’ve been doing back-to-back 30-minute meetings that fill up a whole day. The good ones fill me with energy. It's great to connect with someone, let them know how special I think Culture is, and get a feel for what they're looking for. When it clicks, it just feels fantastic. Even though the bad ones are sometimes so hilariously bad, it's still fun to see the other person's facet. It's almost like an anthropological type of fascination with these things.
A: It seems this is a way to open yourself up to whomever it reaches.
S: It is! I hope this reaches anyone who might be interested in learning something and connecting with me whether we’ve known each other previously or not. I think I have this great fear that I have nothing unique to say, and everything that I want to say has been said before by other people in better ways. I don't know if that's true or not. Maybe it is true, and we'll just call it quits after a couple of posts. But I like to think I have a unique perspective on things. Maybe I don't even know what that is yet. That’s what we’re here to find out.