Earlier this year—after writing nearly a hundred of these posts (excluding the doodles)—something strange, wonderful, and honestly inevitable happened. I found my voice. Or at least, I’m starting to.
I know exactly when it clicked: Blog Post #28. The Cringe. Published on June 8th, 2025. (Bless my spreadsheet for keeping that timestamp.)
The Covers
Before that, every draft in my head sounded like a mash-up of creators I admired.
“How would Neistat say this? How would Savage share this? How would Carlin tear it apart?”
The heart of each story was mine. But the delivery? It felt like doing karaoke versions of someone else’s song—offbeat, out of tune, unsure of its own melody.
But that’s where everyone starts, right?
You copy, you mimic, you stumble… (a lot). It’s all reps. And showing up like that—awkward but consistent—is what let me slowly find my rhythm.
The Shift
There was one practice that fast-tracked the whole thing: speaking. Literally.
For months now, every morning, I draft by talking into a mic, letting MacWhisper transcribe straight into Obsidian.
When I do this, I can’t hear anyone else’s voice but my own. No Neistat, no Savage, no phantom narrators in my head. Just me, blurting out half-formed thoughts and wacky ideas until they take shape. Somewhere in that daily ritual, I stumbled into my own voice—because I was literally listening to it.
The Practice
This didn’t start with these blog posts. It started years ago—when I just wanted to speak better, write better, tell a story better.
From drafting talks, to live-streaming, to recording demos where I had to explain every step out loud—each rep made me a little clearer, a little closer to myself. These morning posts are just the latest iteration of that practice.
But part of this process is doing things I’d rather avoid. Like listening to my own voice. Let’s be honest—most of us hate hearing ourselves. It’s cringey. It’s uncomfortable. It’s a mirror that doesn’t flatter.
And I do it (begrudgingly). I do it because I think it’s necessary. The only way I can understand myself—how I sound, what I mean, what I really believe—is by facing that discomfort head-on. The more I listen, the more I catch the truth beneath the hesitation. The little cracks where fear and self-doubt hide. The more I hear myself, the easier it is to write like myself.
The Find
Finding your voice isn’t glamorous. It’s not cinematic. It’s the grind of showing up, over and over, sounding like a cheap knockoff of everyone you admire… until one day, you don’t. It happens after you’ve done it wrong enough times that you accidentally stumble into what feels right.
The voices that shaped me? They’re still here. I haven’t outgrown them. I’m just jamming with them now. And these days, I’m the one singing lead.
Because the magic isn’t in some lightning bolt moment. It’s in the karaoke. It’s in the rewrites. It’s in those awkward morning mic sessions where you sound like a raccoon in a tin can — and you keep going anyway.
Anyway, that’s the story of how I found my writing voice — or at least, how I’m finding it.
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P.S. That ending “Anyway…” bit? Yeah, that’s 100% Mike Rowe whispering from "The Way I Heard It".