“I should start a blog”
Great idea me! I’ve always had way to much too say about many things, and what better way to satisfy my inner blabbermouth than throwing those opinions out to the wider internet? It sure has to beat the current model of talking at my immediate social group until every pair of eyes eventually glazes over.
So just need to find a platform that I like! It needs to be lightweight, customizable, but minimal effort to setup… And tweaking things should be easy (for a developer)… And I should be able to host it myself statically… This feels too much like work, I’ll deal with it when I’m less busy!
“I should start a blog!”
You’re damn right I should! I’ve grown wiser in the 6 months since last time I thought this, and am much more prepared to do the grunt work to setup a blog exactly to my liking. Jekyll seems, great!
So now just pick a theme. This one seems great if I can just move this over there… And this bit would be so much nicer with a little tweaking… And now to add some flair… And you know what that background needs? Some moving stars…
“I should start a blog!”
OK, so maybe last time I got a little bogged down in the styling and forgot to do any of the rest of this blog thing (such as actually writing anything). This time I’ve got a theme I’m more or less happy with out of the box (the wonderful Chirpy)
Now just to find the time to sit down and write out some well thought out blog posts…
Introduction
Which leads us to here. Welcome to yet another attempt at starting a blog, starring me. Will it get any further than any previous attempts? Who knows? Certainly not me.
Part of me hopes that following previous abortive attempts, maybe this time will actually be different. Maybe if I actually just write for me and only me, rather than just trying to be another tech blog that nobody reads, then I’ll be able to do more of it.
OK, But… Why?
OK, so digging deeper, it’s honestly a pretty good question. Indeed, in the age of chatGPT producing works of staggeringly well written bullshit, one could question why the internet needs another random blog of dubious quality. Maybe it’s a neat way to pull some of my thoughts out of my head and transferring them to ‘paper’? Perhaps it’s that self indulgent smug feeling I get while I sit there ‘writing’ on the train while others (assumedly) scroll away endlessly on social media?
I like to think one of the reasons is at least:
I want to write.
It’s always been something I’ve wanted to be good at, and get into the habit of practicing frequently (I’m very envious of those who find the willpower to write daily).
But writing… is hard. Therefore, I frequently find it gets pushed way down the procrastination ladder, until I magically run out of day and have still not managed to type a single word. It takes time and energy out of your day to write, and even on the rare occasion I get round to it, 90% of what I produce is utter trash that I immediately delete in disgust after reading it (yeah, that self indugent smugness never lasts long…). Writing is a skill, and like any skill, the best way to get good at it is to practice it as much as you can·.
So here I am (again). I don’t really·know what direction this blog is likely to go in at this point, or indeed if it will even last more than the standard month or two of its predecessors. But hey, perhaps it will provide a space for my thoughts, and a medium to practice articulating them to no-one in particular. Maybe it will even one day lead to me feeling good about writing.
So yeah… I should start a blog.