Notes to no one

I write things and then I put them somewhere and then I think to myself that somewhere is actually nowhere.

Kind of like the way you say something true at a dinner table and then the conversation moves on and you wonder if anyone heard you.

I started writing here because I had things in me that I needed to get outside of me. That's the origin story of Francesswren.com. No platform strategy, no brand building, no a five year plan for thought leadership. Just the need to get something that is taking up space inside my chest outside of me and the need of somewhere to put it.

That outlet alone made all the difference. The writing worked and still works. But then somewhere along the line, an infrastructure got involved.

The moment I started to make my writing public, the architecture around it started asking questions I didn't ask myself. Data started showing up. Data like, how many people saw this, how many stayed, how many came back. As an executive, I know these data points well. It all points to one central question, did it perform. The dashboard doesn't care that I wrote something true at 5am before anyone else in the house was awake. It just reports that seventeen people clicked on it.

So now there are two conversations happening. The one between me and the page, which is the real one. And the one between me and the metrics, which is the one that makes me feel like I'm failing at something I never signed up for.

But through all that noise I do wonder who is actually reading this?

And here is the answer I keep landing on: probably not the person who I believe most needs it. Because, that's not how it works. You don't find the essay that challenges you or convinces you to change. You find the essay that aligns with your search. The one that finally names the thing you've been carrying around but unable to articulate for two years. You find it because you were already looking, already unsettled, or already somewhere in the neighborhood of the essay.

Which means my reader is not the unconverted who needs a kernel of information or a gentle nudge. My reader is the person already sitting in the discomfort or questioning the things around them. And I keep having to remind myself that handing someone their own thought back to them in a shape they can hold or giving someone a slice of validation in their questioning, isn't nothing. It's a connection to someone who holds the same discomfort or questions the same unquestionable truths. A community for curiosity or rebellions if you will.

That said, I don't write to change minds. I've made peace with the fact that it rarely happens that way because minds don't change from essays. They change from accumulation, from friction, from lived experience that finally lines up with something they read once and almost forgot. I'm somewhere in that long chain for someone, probably. I won't know where.

I think what I'm learning is that the not-caring and the caring are not opposites. I genuinely need to write, regardless of who sees it. I also genuinely want it to land somewhere real. Both of those needs are true. The need to get it out of me is mine. The hope that it finds someone, that's just human. It's the oldest reason anyone ever told a story.

So, here I am. Writing to no one, and hoping those who need it find it.

XOXO,