I’ve been asked “what is the blog about?”, and honestly, I don’t really have an answer yet. For now, the plan is to write about whatever is on my mind at the moment.

“But surely there is some kind of theme, something that interests you in particular?”

Yeah, yeah, you’re right. But I don’t really like labelling myself, so instead I’ll give you some sneak peeks at posts that are currently brewing in my head/notes app.

• The next post will be about notifications, and how to make them less attention-draining.
• I’m long overdue writing up my redesign of the recipe.
• I made this text-editing tool that I use all the time, that I want to show off.
• I want to say something about the joy and the limits of understanding how things work.
• I have lots of notes on order of operations in user interfaces.
• Oh, and also the confusing order of math notation.
• I have a quirky take on the typography of programming.
• Maybe I’ll also try to explain what programming feels like?

Okay, yes, so it looks like I’ve mostly been thinking about computery stuff. I guess that makes sense: that’s where I spend most of my days.

I’m not sure that the computery streak will continue though, it might just be that I have a lot of pent up stuff I want to share. After I release that pressure, who knows — we’ll see where the writing takes me.

While I’ll leave the content of the blog to the whims of my future self, my current self has some ideas of why I’m starting this blog. Most obvious is wanting to share my thoughts with you, the reader (hi!). I’m also looking forward to your response and/or feedback. I would love for us to have a conversation!

I also want to write to have a conversation with myself. My thoughts tend to become much clearer when I try to explain them to someone. Having to put an idea into words tends to highlight both the good and the bad parts. It forces my brain to be less lazy and actually make up descriptions and examples — which can strengthen a good idea, or show the flaws of a bad one. Writing helps me clarify my ideas in a similar way, but shines an even brighter light on foggy thinking.

For me, writing takes a lot of effort. I’m pretty slow to type out each sentence, I have to edit a bunch of times to get things right, and I feel lost when deciding how to structure a text. There is nothing strange about this —I just haven’t written that much.

I find my inexperience exciting — it means there’s a lot for me to learn! I want to quickly produce a first draft. Iterate through multiple revisions. Work on structure, from sentence-level wording to blog-level “should this be one or multiple posts?”. Write expansive, meandering essays. Whittle an idea down to a single sentence. Find my voice.

My creative endeavors are pretty haphazard and many are left unfinished. Part of what I want to do with this blog is write up some of them, to give myself some closure, and leave room for new projects. I also have a sense that I a regular creative practice would do me good.

So: I plan to write a new post here every week.

Wish me luck discipline!