HackerNoon Contributor Denisa Ganea on HackerNoon, Human Existence, and Everything in Between

If you’re seeing this interview draft, it means you’ve recently published on HackerNoon a story that the community found interesting and/or valuable. For this reason, we would like to help the community get to know you better as well as find out some writing tips from you.

While this template is automatic, our interest in the answers below is genuine and our human editors (and some cyborg wannabes) will review it before publishing.

So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests.

My name’s Denisa. I happen to work for a tech start-up. I’m interested in absolutely everything, however, I don't have any passions (or I’m just too scared to admit it) nor can I say I’m particularly good or talented at anything 👀.

In ADHD classic fashion, I use to jump from one thing to another. Sometimes, when I fail at something, I don’t even wait to get bored to switch.

If you're wondering what you just saw above, that GIF is created by me in VR. It doesn’t have an inherent meaning. Most of the things I do don’t really make sense and I’ve genuinely got no clue how on earth I ended up writing on HackerNoon about things that I hate. But life has its weird ways I guess…

Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about?

Yep, the featured pic of the article is also one of my boring drawings.

Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about?

I don’t usually write unless I really have something to say.

Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?)

I like to ask for opinions and feedback from people with more professional experience in the specific niche I’m researching (e.g., for my last article, I had very fruitful discussions with game devs).

I am not a specialist in everything, and I don’t want to spread even more misunderstandings than there already are.

Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing?

The lack of focus. I often try to say a lot and manage to say nothing.

What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career?

Boy, I’m too depressed to think of that.

Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice?

I have no pleasures. Everything is painful to different degrees. Simply existing is deeply unpleasant. Listening to a good song is painful because it reminds me that I can’t sing like that. Watching a great performance, with flawlessly executed choreography, gets me insecure and frustrated, so it’s painful.

Focusing to read and understand complex papers is painful. Working out is painful.

The experience of human existence has been fairly miserable overall for me, especially since keeping this high-maintenance body alive takes way too much effort. It’s exhausting. Then you may wonder why you’re keeping it alive after all?

Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it?

Not really, I don’t have any hobbies. Everything is a chore.

What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next?

I have a few more ideas for “Web3”/blockchain-related topics, but I need to make more research on what content is already available on them, including the angles presented. Because if I start to write something, I might as well aim to be as original, technically accurate, and insightful as possible.

There’s no point in publishing something that plenty of other people have said before.

One thing I got clear now is that I need to work a lot more on the content wording and the way I deliver the information.

What’s your opinion on HackerNoon as a platform for writers?

I actually think it’s brilliant! At least compared to Medium, HackerNoon is on the top of the mountain, whereas Medium is below the sea level. It’s not only below sea level, Medium dropped so low it reached dinosaur fossils. I’m glad you guys moved away from that sinking ship.

On HackerNoon, each story goes through an editor’s filter, which means that they help you with minor tweaks and changes meant to boost SEO (props to the editor who picked my story! @ashumerie) and also actively support you afterward to drive traffic to the article.

Whereas, the last time I tried to publish something on Medium, their stupid bot slapped a “no-index” tag on my story. And their user support was utterly useless on this issue. And I am also very petty and will always bash their platform for it. Forever.

Thanks for taking time to join our “Meet the writer” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words?

Yeah, I (partially) hope no one is going to read this.