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Excuses (or how I built a shitty blog)

This post is about writing, encouragement, excuses, getting out of your own way, and a little bit of JavaScript.

I wrote this for me. Unless you like it, then I wrote it for you too.

On Writing

I have been wanting to write.

I have been encouraged to write.

I wrote, and received good feedback.

I will write more.

On Writing About Writing

I've been here before.

I didn't really express why to write in that unfinished post from a couple of years ago. I still talked about everything that surrounds writing: what to write about, writing habits, personal websites. I talked about building websites, buying domains, plans, Digital Gardens, etc.

My thoughts are a lot clearer now. Writing helps me think. Writing forces me to think. Right now in my field (software development) we have AI producing many of the things we used to expend thought-energy on: code, explanations of code, PRDs, documentation, etc. The thinking has shifted. The cost of knowledge and information is at an all-time low, and conversely, thinking is more important than ever.

Thinking helps me do my job. It helps me discern slop from not. It helps me communicate to both carbon and silicon. It helps me decide to set a timer for 25 minutes so I don't just end up writing forever (4:34 left). When a pattern becomes useful, I can abstract it into an interface or habit so I don't have to think and can just do.

Writing requires thinking, just about always. Turning off the autocomplete and trying to put thoughts into language is, as best as I can tell, a uniquely human experience. LLMs run sophisticated algorithms to generate the next most desirable next token. Maybe that's how human consciousness works. I doubt it. Either way, writing does a lot more for me, my humanity, my thinking, my soul than receiving tokens from an LLM.

So I'm going to start writing more (again).

On Encouragement

Last time I went through this phase, I just posted my writings in markdown on GitHub. This worked well, I was writing! I figured I'd pick up the blog piece eventually, but I didn't and I stopped writing.

Then I wrote again, just some quick thoughts about React Miami/people's sentiment on React, AI, React Router, and Remix, and received good feedback. In particular, I received good feedback from my colleague, Ryan Florence:

you're good at writing, make a website, host it on github pages, keep it simple, and write regularly

On Excuses

Oh but you see, Ryan, it's not so simple! Watch out, because I've got "reasons" for not writing more.

In order to write well I must:

• practice writing on a schedule (no matter how I feel) to build a habit
• distribute on something I'm proud of (like an actual website)

To which Ryan said:

drop the second requirement
but keep "an actual website"

It's good advice. The goal isn't to build the website, the goal is to write. Distribution matters, and it encourages more writing, so I need a place that I own where I can put my writing. Given how easy it is to just ask an Agent to build me a website these days, there really is so few excuses.

In fact, that's what Ryan did:

My Stack

So that's what I started with.

My stack is Just JavaScript™ and some markdown files. I wanted to add images to this post, so now it has some images.

I'm sure I'll build more features. I'll just keep asking LLMs to stare deeply into their linear matrices so I can format quotes properly. Eventually it'll get heavy, and I can refactor it or adopt an off-the-shelf solution. Eventually I'll also make it look a little better. For posterity's sake, here's what we've got:

lol it's the hilarious styles
-Ryan

Thanks Ryan, you gave them to me.

Things That Still Suck

There are a lot of things that suck about my website/blog.

• I don't have good auto generated thumbnails for sharing; I should probably figure that out
• I have no search, or tags, or anything, but I also have no idea if I'll need them
  • Maybe eventually I'll group by year
• I don't have any unique (or good) styles or branding

I'll probably improve it over time, or maybe I won't. After all, all I'm trying to do is write more.

The Lesson

I remember reading a version of Aesop's Fables as a child, where at the end of each story it would explain the moral to you instead of letting you sit with it and discover it for yourself. In honor of that tradition, I will explain the lesson (because again, this is for me):

• Clarify what you actually want (for me, "to write more")
• Clarify the purpose ("because it helps me think")
• Remove excuses
• Find people who believe in you
• In order for someone to believe in you:
  • Build relationships and trust
  • Do things worthy of being believed in
    • Put yourself out there, over and over again, and learn

Built from Markdown with a tiny Node.js script.