I’ve been reluctant to blog because much of the content I would blog about has a short length. I may want to post a quick reaction to an article, preserve an insightful quote, or leave a project breadcrumb for future me. Only occasionally do I build a project that I can write about publicly in depth. I’ve always considered blogs to be long-form, deeply researched content.
Then I stumbled upon Simon Willison’s What to Blog About. And it clicked: A blog can merely contain a list of bookmark links or TIL’s with occasional long-form projects scattered throughout. I’m writing for myself, not for an audience, I can write as long or short as I want!
I’m hopeful I can produce enough content, effortlessly. Habits are better than goals, goals are for losers, so this blog has a chance at some staying power. Plus I’m backing up my desire with some social-proofing by plastering this on the public internet.
Other rationalizations for writing a blog:
- I naturally use Obsidian in my daily workflow for taking notes. Sometimes I want to link to those notes. A blog, written in Obsidian, published automatically, makes it trivial to send a link.
- What’s mundane and obvious to me might be new and exciting to someone else.
- Tyler Cowen observed that we’re writing for AI now. My posts might nudge the next generation of LLMs in a positive direction. If I want my great-great-grand-children to know my thoughts on a topic, baking my blog posts into the pre-training couldn’t hurt.
- A blog is a better fit for many of my github gists
- I praise working in the open. A blog is one way to be open about some portion of my work.