Writing like this is new for me. If I start today then it isn't a resolution but it is just something that I have started to do (I wrote this on December 30th). I'm not anti-resolution either. I, like probably many of other people who celebrate the new year, have tried and failed with the resolutions set for a new year. I've even decided to set a couple of goals for 2025: ERG twice a week, read a book a month, etc. Carissa says I should also work on being on my phone less, which is fair. I consume a lot of content and most of that is through my phone. I've decided to write here to create more which will hopefully help with less consumption.
I've written on one of the sticky notes lining the bottom of my monitor the mantra "Learn, Do, Share, Repeat". I've done a lot of learning (or consuming), a decent amount of doing, but not a lot sharing so I'm hoping to do more of that here. The goal isn't to make this a coding blog or anything like that. I've tried that before thinking it'd help me get a better job with more compensation but it was uninspiring and unsustainable. Maybe I'll put code here. I think it'd be fun to post some of the random analyses I do, I've always been inspired by cool data journalism (like what The Pudding has published, though I don't see myself doing anything that complex anytime soon).
I'm hoping that this becomes a place for me to formalize thoughts that I usually ruminate over and then forget. I'd like it to motivate me to read and remember what I've read. Truthfully I am a bit inspired by the "personal knowledge management" trend but I'm trying not to be dogmatic and really focus on writing down more things rather that getting caught up in tools or techniques.
Lastly, I also want to be conscious of what has been a barrier to me writing publicly in the past. I've found that when I dwell on things I'll either come to a reasonable counter argument or decide that someone else has. In hindsight a reasonable counter argument was probably more valuable to write down than the original idea but I shouldn't be afraid of opening up the idea up to scrutiny. The world probably needs less people shouting into the void and feeding LLMs but I decided to carve out a space that would feel meaningful to write out my thoughts.