The Beginning
I wanted to start with a post on the motivations here. I want to first acknowledge that I’ve tried to put my writings online many times and have always found a reason to abandon it. However, I think I’ve finally got my thinking in a place where none of those excuses matter any more. My ultimate hope is that someone, somewhere will read this and start writing as well. We need more authenticity online, direct from real people.
If none of that happens, at least I’ll get better at writing.
Why make a writing in 2024?
There are so many places these days to shovel ‘content’ into. Instagram, Substack, Twitter (sorry, X), the list goes on. I have a few problems with these platforms. The big one is control. I’m bound by the features these sites allow me to use. While I do believe constraints can boost creativity, I don’t want to be bound in this space. I don’t want to be part of the Doom Scrolling.
I also get the feeling I’m working for these platforms when I interact with them. In exchange for cheap content hosting, I’m feeding their Ad machines, and now their AI machines. While I doubt I’ll be able to escape the massive AI content farming, I would rather it happen on my own terms. On the Open web. On the Internet I grew up with.
Maybe I’m just being nostalgic. Truthfully, running my own site just sounds cool to me. I read a lot. Mostly other people’s blogs. It seems to me that people who get good at writing also accel in other parts of their life and I want that. Making stuff, and sharing it with the world is the coolest thing in the world to me at this point in my life. I make a lof of stuff (look at my Github!), the “telling people about it” part is where I need to get better.
That being said, I took an informal survey from the people I personally know and approximately zero people read blogs. “Is that still a thing?”
What do I want from this?
There lies my first hangup. Who is my audience? Who am I even talking to? The likely hood is no one. Without the recommendation systems promoting this site, there will likely be no organic growth. This is the first excuse I have to get over. This has to be for me.
Sometimes (ok, often) I lay in bed thinking about all the writing I want to put out there. Then I eventually convince myself that no one will care and fall asleep. I hate that. Not only do I lose sleep, but the negative self-talk leaves me to unmotivated in general. Screw that.
So why then? To get better at thinking, writing and creating. And, maybe, when I get better, other people will enjoy it as well.
What I hope you get from it
I’m so bad at marketing. As an engineer I’ve perfected the problem-solving part of making things, but marketing (I’m realizing) is all about finding the problem to solve. It involves finding an audience, a market, to make things for. So, what will you get from this? I don’t totally know. I don’t know how (or “if”) this will evolve. I don’t even know how people will find it. But that’s all ok because I can make it for myself first. I figure if I make stuff that I like then someone out there will like it too.
Wrap Up
Not knowing who this is for is scary, but knowing takes trial and error. I can’t get stuck in this place or I can’t move on. Onward!
Lord, this is a terrible ending. Maybe I’ll come back and finish this at some point.
FIRST BLOG POST DONE!