In 2014, Maria Popova, the writer of brainpickings.org, did an interview with Tim Ferriss which remains one of my favourite conversations of all time. For context, Brain Pickings is a collection of beautiful and profound musings described as a ‘one-woman labor of love exploring what it means to live a decent, substantive, rewarding life.’ Maria also writes a biweekly newsletter which consistently brighten up my week.

In this particular interview, Maria discusses her blog and who she writes for:

Tim Ferriss: The quote that I heard you cite that I wanted to dig into a bit was the Kurt Vonnegut saying, “write to please just one person”. So, my question to you is, when you write, is that still the case? And if so, who is that person that you are writing for?

Maria Popova: It is very much the case. I still write for an audience of one, and that is myself. It’s like I said, it’s just a record of my thought process, my way of just trying to navigate my way through the world and understand my place in it, understand how we relate to one another, how different pieces of the world relate to each other and create a pattern of meaning out of seemingly unrelated, meaningless information, and the intersection or transmutation of information into wisdom, really, which what learning to live is. It’s about wisdom.

It’s interesting, too, because when I started Brain Pickings – like I said – almost eight years ago, it started very much as a private record of my own curiosity and I shared it with seven co-workers that I had at the time just as an email newsletter thing. Now, to think that there are about 7 million people – strangers – reading it every month… [it’s so] surreal that I still feel like I’m writing for one person, one very inward person.

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When I started this blog back in March 2019, I intended it to be something like an online journal – a place for me to record my thoughts and reflections. But as my readership has grown over the last year, I occasionally feel the urge to adjust my content for a wider audience.

But the more I write, the more I experience this wonderful reminder by Austin Kleon: to write the books you want to read. Sure, I could write about the latest current affairs and topical issues to be ‘safe’. But frankly, the stuff I write about, I’d like to read about – and chances are, someone out there would like reading it too.

Like Maria, writing is ultimately my way of navigating through the world to understand what it is to live. And so no matter the spectators, I write for an audience of one: myself.

Here’s how artist Marc Weidenbaum put it in his celebration of blogging on the twentieth anniversary of his blog, Disquiet.com:

And don’t concern yourself with whether or not you “write.” Don’t leave writing to writers. Don’t delegate your area of interest and knowledge to people with stronger rhetorical resources. You’ll find your voice as you make your way. There is, however, one thing to learn from writers that non-writers don’t always understand. Most writers don’t write to express what they think. They write to figure out what they think. Writing is a process of discovery. Blogging is an essential tool toward meditating over an extended period of time on a subject you consider to be important.