October 12

Why we draw, write and create

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We are not a content farm

Content farms exist. They look like people bent over the computer, searching for SEO terms, which they then stuff into the articles they write.

And when you click on the article, there’s nothing there but nonsense.

Why bother writing? Good question.
Why bother writing? Good question.

We don’t want to be that.

We want our content to resonate with people. When people read it, we want them to be helped. We want them to have practical handles for how to deal with this complex thing called life. We want them to grow from it.

And sometimes it is painful when we don’t see the engagement with our content. Low click rates, people not opening our newsletters, and people criticising us online.

This hurt.

Today, I read the forum page on Hardware Zone Singapore, after being directed to it by a Google Search for liveyoungandwell.com, to see how we were performing online.

Someone commented, after our TODAY article on depression,

what BS. Haven’t even start working, then talk about depression.

That hurt a lot.

It hurt because it struck a chord. That I didn’t know what I was talking about.

You will go through this in your life.

Where you ask,

Do I have what it takes?

Sometimes you don’t. In ‘Wild at Heart’, John Eldredge talks about the one question that all boys ask themselves in growing up.

Do I have what it takes?

And growing up, we sometimes aren’t able to answer that question well.

Because we are hurt by our parents, by society, who do not validate us for what we do.

We want to give hope

We hope our work here gives you hope for what you do, and the decisions you make, however outlandish they sound.

Your dreams don't have to die with you
Your dreams don’t have to die with you

That’s why we’ve gone to great effort to interview people from across different walks of life, people who would normally not even be noticed in society. Like Ce Xun, the bus driver.

Ce Xun became a bus driver after quitting his job in the town council, after finding that the work there didn’t fulfil him. He had a diploma, and his friends didn’t expect him to take on a blue-collar job like bus driving.

But he did, remembering the times when he was younger when he enjoyed following buses around.

We want you to continue those dreams of yours, no matter how outlandish they seem.

We want to share from our hearts

As mushy as this sounds, we primarily write content in the first person voice. You will see a lot of ‘I’-s and personal experiences.

We choose to be vulnerable
We choose to be vulnerable

Whilst we know that may be biased, we believe it’s impossible to maintain neutrality and say something, worth saying. There’s always going to be an element of ‘you’ in the story.

We won’t be hiding behind bots, that’s for sure.

We want to provide clarity

We want to be the signal amidst the noise. We want to be the sharp beam across the fog, that helps you see the way forward.

We definitely don't need more people talking at us
We definitely don’t need more people talking at us

These are confusing times.

But we believe in the power of long-form content, written, and spoken, to bring clarity. Why?

You will remember the first book you wrote that made you go

Wow, that transformed our lives.

Because it provided a balanced argument, that wasn’t based on sensation, but on well-considered opinions. Because it gave you an argument that was well backed by research, and not something that was simply off the top of the writer’s head. Because it led you to see a different perspective.

But it’s also because as much as Facebook has ‘democratised’ content creation, they are still a medium that’s based on the attention economy. And sensation grabs attention.

We want to give you quality insight, from quality people

They haven’t necessarily built a high bar for content quality.

In building these sites, we’ve thought very deeply about the kind of content we want to do, and how we want to do them.

As an inspiration, we want to be the New York Times of op-eds and human features. We share from the personal experiences of people.

Our focus isn’t on groundbreaking news, but on quality opinions. We see ourselves sharing insights that still make sense a year from now, decades from now, and we want to provide long form content that lasts for a long time.

We know that’s a high standard to hold, but we want this to be the standard for op-eds on the web. Because we’ve seen so many sites that have fallen from their lofty heights.

Like RICE Media, that has moved from an alternative voice to clickbait and branded content.

Whilst we do journalism from time to time, trying to find the next story, our focus is more on human journalism, finding the human behind the story, rather than the story behind the human.

We invite people to share quality opinions on life, and to provide slice-of-life experiences.

To what ends?

Thought for intentional living.

We want to nurture and grow you to become a more thoughtful, anchored person, in this difficult world.

How do you build a person? Here we believe it's one block at a time
How do you build a person? Here we believe it’s one block at a time

We do this not because we think we are better, but because we think that it helps to share this journey of life.

5 years ago, I quit Instagram. It just got too ‘sick’ for me to handle.

Surely there was a better way to life than scrolling. We believe there is.

Start from reading.


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