I think that a lot recently.

It has nothing to do with going through a crisis of the self. I'm doing just fine.

But ever since I've been ghostwriting, at times I wonder, what the f*ck are we (I) even doing here.

This isn't the first time it's crossed my mind. I remember vividly working under a pretty useless CEO once, who couldn't even formulate a comprehensible sentence in Telegram chats. The next thing you know, I see a book supposedly written by him in the Business section of my local bookshop.

Clearly it wasn't him writing that — it was someone like me who is lacking the "C-Suite" title or the social capital to be even considered for being quoted. For what it's worth, I do know the Cointelegraph Op-Ed policy by heart at this point, so if I ever felt some sort of opinionated way, I might as well submit something of my own and see what happens.

It's sometimes reassuring when external bystanders who know the person in whose name the work is printed say things like, "I knew he didn't write that." (It's almost exclusively he.)

Yet it feels weird, at times wrong.

Why do I write comments on behalf of leadership people who can't even be bothered to spend 10 minutes thinking about comments on current events in their area of expertise (not mine, but I somehow have to become a bit of an expert then) so that they can be quoted in a fancy newspaper?

What's real and what isn't? In the best case, they will at least provide some input into it, but many times, not at all.

Once you know about the industrial ghostwriting complex in crypto, you do wonder... why do we, as an industry that wanted to be bottom-up and different, adopt this?

Anyway, look, I am not complaining about the fact that I'm making some money on the side that way - it just makes me question whenever I see an Op-Ed whether the person supposedly publishing it is the actual writer.

Does it matter?

Maybe.

I guess if no one reads anyway, it's just about the backlinks or prestige.

And whenever I write such a thing, I can't connect with the work. I know this productivity guru said you should just imagine how a task would be if it were fun. Pretending to be a 40-year-old alpha male tech bro and being forced into the corset of an Op-Ed policy to write about their supposed smart commentary about tokenization of commodities just isn't fun no matter what way you turn it.

It's pretending to be another person in writing, like splintering a little.

Maybe it's how artists feel when commissioned to paint something that doesn't fulfill their artistic requirements, but another person's.

You turn off that personal voice of yours and pretend being someone else.

The result reads like...Something I don't feel in tune with.

Is it actually that other person's voice, though?

I can't know as I never read anything they actually wrote themselves.

That's the ironic part.

It creates an article that - at least is coherent and reads well - but it has nothing to do with me. Even if it was I who spent hours researching the topic, trying to find an interesting angle, and painstakingly typing it in.

That's what alienated labor must feel like.

I have no control over the topic. I have no control over the voice. No decision-making power whatsoever.

Marx stresses two points: 1) in the process of work, and especially of work under the conditions of capitalism, man is estranged from his own creative powers, and 2) the .objects of his own work become alien beings.

-Erich Fromm Marx's Concept of Man

I'm reminded again of the first lines of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's novel The Angel's Game.

"A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange or a story [...] because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price."

What's ghostwriting other than selling pieces of my soul, then?

For what?

So I can afford to live. To pay my bills. To afford time to write on my account without needing to worry about monetizing. Without anyone else stamping their name on it.

But the messy feelings remain.

Thanks for reading 💚

If you can relate, lmk.

The good news is that I have plenty of other side projects in which I do feel like I'm just doing me. Otherwise, I'd have gone crazy long ago.