If you look at my blog over the past little while, you’ll notice a pattern.
Beyond the stories of restaurant kitchens… The life/work lessons wrapped in overly detailed ways to do mundane things…
There’s something else:
Every post is (usually) named with just one word:
Stuff. Extra. Zero. Designer. Obsessive. Afterburn.
A quiet creative decision. One that started out instinctively — but has since become very, very intentional.
The game
I know how writing online works.
From an SEO standpoint, one-word titles are… almost comically foolish. No long-tail keywords. No extra metadata to index. No hooks. No “How to…”
Fewer keywords. Less surface area to rank. Lower chances of being discovered.
Less clicks. Less likes. Less traffic.
But that’s not why I write.
I’m not writing to bait the algorithm. I’m not writing to go viral.
I’m writing to express something I care about. To capture something I noticed, felt, struggled with — and put it into words. So that maybe, if I’m lucky, someone else might feel it too.
Yes — I’ve seen the playbook. The growth-hack formulas. The SEO-driven, algorithm-pleasing, “this is how you win the internet” approach.
And I’m not just avoiding it. I’m opting out — with pleasure.
Because I don’t want the chase of make-believe internet points to take away from the points I’m trying to make.
Snake oil
So much of what we now call “online writing” feels like snake oil. (To me, anyway.)
There’s a tone that’s so normalized, it barely even registers as strange anymore:
“10 Tiny Habits That Quietly Changed My Entire Workflow”
“Why Slowing Down Made Me 10x More Productive”
“10-Minute Routines That Save Me Hours Every Week”
(So many 10s.)
They’re not titles. Not really. They’re descriptions — dressed up to sell you something. A sales pitch disguised as insight.
Imagine if...
Imagine if we applied that same naming logic to the things we actually care about, like songs or movies:
“13 Things I Imagined Happening After That One Perfect Night”. (Enchanted – Taylor Swift, 2010)
“10 Things I Let Go Of So I Could Finally Light Up the Damn Stage”. (GOLDEN – HUNTR/X, from KPop Demon Hunters, 2025)
“11 Life Lessons I Learned From a Man Who Accidentally Witnessed All of History”. (Forrest Gump, 1994)
Absurd, right?
Because the best works — the ones we feel — aren’t reduced to blurbs.
They’re given names.
Claim it
A good name doesn’t explain. It distills.
It doesn’t describe what something is — it dares to claim what it means. That’s the challenge I give myself with every post.
Name the thing. Don’t just describe it. Don’t soften it with qualifiers. Don’t stretch it thin.
Give it a single word (or two). An anchor for something abstract. A placeholder for a feeling that didn’t have language — until now.
Fewer words don’t reduce the meaning of something. It concentrates it. It’s like distilling a complex flavor down to a single drop. And when it hits? It burns in the best way.
It’s not easy. Every post is a rep. Every word is part of the practice.
Not just of writing, but of looking — really looking — at what I’m trying to say. And saying it clearly enough that I can carry it with me.
Every sentence. Every section. Every title.
Part of a quiet effort: To notice what matters. To give form to the formless. To name what I’ve lived through — not to explain it, but to finally understand it. (Or to start to understand it).
To create the language for what I do — and why it matters — so I can better understand what I do, and who I am, a little bit better. Every day.