Walkie-talkies

July 7, 2026

Writing has never come easily to me. Which is a funny thing to put at the top of a piece of writing, but that's actually the point I wanted to share.

I have plenty of thoughts. Sometimes too many. Getting them out and onto a page in a coherent form is the hard part. For me, they don't come out as sentences. So writing usually means staring at a blank page while the thing I meant to say wanders off, and for years my solution was to just not write. Or, if I did, it was very short and concise. Contrast this to talking with friends or colleagues, where I'm very expressive and often have a lot to say!

So, today I tried something different. I went for a walk and recorded myself talking. I might call these walkie-talkies.

I used the Google Recorder app since it is free, doesn't stop during pauses, and automatically transcribes whatever you say. I had my phone in my pocket, transcription running, headphones on, and me, narrating my own brain for nearly two hours.

Was it awkward? Yes, it was awkward. I kept wondering how loud I was being. When someone came toward me on the sidewalk I'd pause mid-sentence, like I'd been caught at something, or just cross the street. I went completely silent passing a guy with a big scary-looking dog and didn't start again until we were well clear of each other. There's a particular self-consciousness in being seen talking to nobody — even now with earbuds everywhere it felt weird, but I kept going.

And it worked! A couple hours of rambling produced more usable thinking than weeks of trying to sit down and write. This post came from that walk. So did the next several. So did a bunch of notes, a grocery list, some action items, and a list of things I want to look up later.

Moving helps the flow a lot, I think. So does not being able to see the page where I'd fuss over word choice or sentence structure. Mostly my thoughts just come out better and faster through my mouth than through my hands. Plus, feeding the transcription to AI and having it triage, cleanup, and link all my messy ideas into a coherent form, is a huge productivity boost.

Next time I'm going to try using a headset with a better microphone. I'll probably look even more like I'm on a call. A guy on the phone is normal. A guy narrating his life to the void is the local weirdo.

Either way, it was a fun experiment and next time I'll try to care less about what people think. Still a work in progress.