Third Time's the Charm

This post marks my third attempt at consistent blogging. It is of no coincidence that this post will also likely precede my third, vaguely-justified hiatus from consistent blogging. However, as they say, the third time’s the charm.

On the very first day of 2021, I had this sudden realization that, while I remember the broad strokes of the previous years of my life, many of the details of my day-to-day have either been lost or reduced to vignettes; emotions associated with images, snippets of events, and the occasional short story. This had 100% been exacerbated by quarantine, during which I basically became a zombie, but I’m sure I’ll cover that in another post. Ultimately, I decided that the best way for me to counteract this gradual “greying out” would be to start a journal, which I have been writing in at least monthly, since.

Journaling has helped me immensely; I don’t just use it for month-to-month record-keeping, but also for remembering details about what was on my mind, what was on my plate, and what it seemed that the future might hold. On the upside, it was a super effective way for me to organize my thoughts and deal with challenges I felt I should face on my own. On the downside, the private (and uniquely angsty) nature of its contents preclude it from ever seeing the light of day, which is why, at least since the start of 2021, I have not been blogging. Before that, of course, it was just laziness.

Anyhow, in the last few days, my ideas for also maintaining a digital, public-facing blog have coalesced. For one, it’ll hopefully be an interesting way for the subset of friends/relatives and people who care to keep up with whatever I’m up to. By virtue of being able to include photos, videos, and music, it’ll also have a much more colorful presentation than my minimalist, pen-only journal. In the rest of this entry, I’ll outline some thoughts on how I can make a tenable routine out of writing posts, and in the next, which I’ll hopefully get to within the week, I’ll try to cover everything that’s happened in the last year.

I think the first order of action with regard to maintaining a consistent upload schedule will be to focus on publishing shorter posts. When I set a higher bar for the depth and quality of each post, the task becomes disproportionately daunting, and requires much more activation energy. On the other hand, I’m guessing that forcing myself to capture smaller ideas more frequently will make it easier to just start writing, and perhaps will inspire more detailed pieces.

Additionally, I’ve gotten to a point where I feel confident expressing my opinion on certain facets of programming, and more generally, computer science. Thus, I’d like to start reintroducing technical articles back into the mix.

Finally, I had this random idea to get other people to write snippets for pieces on my blog. Maybe this particular example doesn’t have a feasible implementation, but the idea of broadening the format of what ends up on here seems appealing in its novelty, so with any luck, I’d like to give it a shot.

To cover all of these bases, my current plan is to aim for two posts per month. The first will be freeform, either technical or a literary experiment, and should land around halfway through. The second will come out around the end of the month, and will aim to cover interesting events that transpired since its precedent. Notably, there’ll be an exception for this month’s second post, which will try to bridge the entirety of my radio silence over the last year.

So, for the third time, wish me luck! I’ll be back soon.