Why write a blog?

I've never really written in this capacity before. Officially I did work as a technical writer for several years of my career, but I got tired of that.

The problem with the kind of technical writing I was doing is that nobody ever read my work. I wrote user manuals for quite possibly the worst piece of government software you've ever seen. I used Adobe Robohelp to generate thousands of pages of html and manage all the styles, screenshots, and links between pages.

I spent a lot of time getting things right, making sure it made sense, all the details were there but not too many to slow you down, and the end result was that nobody cared. My boss thought I did a great job, but I was so far removed from the customers that I never got any feedback. The positive outcome of that whole situation is that I became a software engineer.

This project is a little different. I'm doing it for me. Not for a job, paycheck, or any customer, and I want to see how much I can actually make happen.

So why start a blog in 2024, when blogging is clearly a 2002 endeavor?

Sharing ideas

I don't know if my ideas are any good, but sometimes I might have some decent ones. And so I want to put them out onto the internet and see what the heck happens. So here we go.

Figuring out my own ideas

Writing helps me think through what I want. Putting words down on the keyboard helps me untangle my brain, and makes me a better communicator, and I want to be a better communicator. A lot of this process never goes anywhere, because I either never produce anything or I venture down some path and I realize I don't like what I've made, but at least the process is productive.

Creating something permanent, so that future me can look back on it and see what i was doing then

I don't know what I'm going to get from this. But I am interested in it in theory. When I go back and read old journals from myself, I find them so gratifying - it's hard to remember what I felt when I was 16, but the journal is a peek into that time of my life. Hopefully there's some value from that.

Putting something out in the world that's imperfect

For most of my life I've been afraid of not doing something because I'd be bad at at it, or that it would be low quality. Only now am I able to even begin to work through that fear. Doing it badly is better than not doing it at all. I'm 37 years old and just starting to believe this.

I'm not gonna worry about CSS styling too much, there might be typos. I'm okay with it all.

A lot of this process is also just me figuring out how to lower the barrier to publishing, so that I can put stuff out there without having to feel like I polished it perfectly.

I've been inspired by lots of other bloggers and writers

Especially the technical & leadership people out there. Their writing is so good, and it makes me want to do what they do. Here's a short list, in no particular order.

Even the non-technical non-leadership writers have lots of good things to say.

There are way more people than this who write good things on the internet. I'll add more to this list over time.

I'm unemployed

So I have some time right now, though not as much as I would like, because I have a new child as well.

If you're hiring a software engineering manager, email me