Do I Still Sound Like Me?

There’s this weird thing that happens as you improve.

You start sounding better.
And somehow, that makes you less sure of your own voice.

I’ve been writing a lot lately.
Trying to sharpen. Trying to simplify.
Make things land. Make them clean.

And every time I smooth out a sentence, I hear this voice in the back of my head:

“Would the people who liked my earlier writing still care about this?”

Like… here’s something I’d write before:

“Feels like half my thoughts come out like they tripped on the way out of my head, and I just leave them there, blinking on the page.”

Now I’d probably revise that to:

“Some ideas are better left unpolished—raw clarity has its own kind of trust.”

Cleaner, sure. But is it better? Or just... more acceptable?

From Command Line to Conference Room

Same thing happened in my career.

I used to talk like a developer—because I was a developer.
I’d explain things in metaphors involving memory leaks and bash loops.
I spoke like someone still in the trenches.

Then I moved up. Became a lead.
Then a manager. Then a consultant.
Started sitting in rooms with people who only speak in frameworks and acronyms and layered abstractions of decision trees.

I learned to speak their language.
Which was useful—until it wasn’t.

Because somewhere in there, I started wondering:

“Can I still talk to the people doing the work?”

Or worse:

“Do they still hear me as one of them? Or just another suit who used to code?”

Evolution vs Disconnection

That’s the real fear, right?

That getting better makes you sound less familiar.
That improvement = distance.
That polish makes people stop trusting the edge in your voice that made you feel real to begin with.

So now I’m stuck in this loop:

• If I keep refining, I lose the texture.
• If I don’t, I risk sounding lazy or unclear.
• If I overthink it, I forget how to just write.

I want to write clean.
But I don’t want to sound clean-cut.

A Little Static Is Good

So here’s where I’ve landed—for now.

• I’ll evolve the structure.
• I’ll trim the fat.
• I’ll tighten the loops.
  But I’ll keep a little noise.

Somewhere in the post, something will feel a little off.
A thought will interrupt itself.
A sentence will run too long.
A metaphor won’t quite land.

Because that’s the part that still sounds like me.

And if I lose that, what’s the point?

One More Example, Just for Me

Old voice:

“I don’t care how it gets done. Just get it done. I’ll clean it up later.”

Evolved voice:

“I operate with a bias for execution—progress over perfection. We can iterate once we’re in motion.”

I like both.
But I trust the first one more.