Hello Blog

The idea of making my blog took hold after I discovered Kagi Small Web. I saw it on the front page of hacker news a few days ago and loved exploring the blogs of strangers I would have never seen otherwise. There were posts about tech, art, history, traveling and AI.

I’ve always valued, perhaps more than I should, the subjective yet authentic facts. In a world burdened with paid reviews and astroturfing, an anecdote from a friend can weigh the same as a thousand five-star ratings, if not more. This relates to the value of a blog. When a post is written, not to sell, but merely to share a lived experience, it is precious.

I decided, at least for the time being, not to use AI to write the content of my blog. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-AI. I use AI daily, mostly because it’s the path of least resistance when coding, sparing my brain power for other purposes. Here’s the rationale: when reading the blog of another, I’d rather read their ‘imperfect’ but unique way of expressing themselves. AI, even if trained on previous posts they wrote, even if reviewed, is not their voice. Using it only after a post is drafted, to fix typos and such, I think is acceptable.

I wrote some content before - this isn’t my first blog. Unfortunately, I never stuck with it. This time, God willing, I won’t abandon the project.

Ways of making blogging a habit

  1. Write every Saturday morning after waking.
  2. Don’t insist on writing long posts. A single sentence is enough.
  3. Make it easy to write and publish (more on that later).
  4. Keep a ready list of subjects I want to post about.
  5. Remember the benefits of blogging.

The benefits of blogging

  1. Become a better writer.
  2. The off chance of making a friend or building an audience that is interested in what you have to say.
  3. Practice some web technologies, experience problems that could become business opportunities.
  4. Have a support for structured thinking.
  5. Memorize what I write about.
  6. It’s fun.

Subjects I might want to write about next

  1. Guidelines for my blog
  2. Book takeaways (e.g. The Like Switch, which I read recently)
  3. My experience interviewing and hiring a software intern.
  4. Why I chose Hugo over Ghost.

Enough lists. I meant to talk about the technical setup of the blog, but I guess that will have to wait for another post.