Reflecting on this Blog
I wanted to take a second to reflect on the tone and content of this blog, which overall I’m not super satisfied with. This blog has primarily served as a place where I put mostly software engineering and running content over the years. However, rarely do I compose a post for this blog that I feel is “good enough” to be publishing here.
This goes beyond perfectionism — I think seeing amazing content every day on aggregation websites like Reddit and “the orange website” creates this implicit feeling that every post I produce needs to be well-written, technically impressive, and cast me in a good light. For better or worse, having my name as the title of this blog makes me feel like every post has a material effect on my (vomits in mouth a little bit) personal brand.
However, I also acknowledge that the blogs I admire the most don’t work that way. They blog about what they’re currently working on, or investigating, or being challenged with. I have seen this mindset described by the current generation of internet content producers as “Document, Don’t Create.”
Ideally I would love to fill this blog with a ton of content describing all the things I’m working through currently. I do want this blog to be helpful for others to come across it, but it should be most valuable to myself, as a record of my journey to acquire more knowledge and experiences across a variety of fields.
I tried to do this a bit while hacking on ChineseDict (1, 2). It was fun and helpful to document my current challenges and where I want to go. I aspire to move the tone of this blog more in that direction going forward.