A Season Change

I'm making some changes here. You can skip to the bottom if you're in a rush.

Today, I present to you a story in three parts.

Part 1: Writing Online

I've been writing online in some capacity for the better part of fifteen years at this point. There's been times where I've written daily (such as my 30 days of blogging in 2022) or gone months having written nothing (it's been a month since my last post here).

If there's one thing you could say about what I've written, it's that there's "seasons" to it.

It's not hard to see that in early 2022, for example, I went on a bit of a productivity bender, looking up to the likes of Matt D'Avella, Ali Abdaal, and Elizabeth Filips. That's great and all, but my interest lied purely in being able to help myself use my time effectively, not to educate others.

Or a few years before that, where ranting about technology, privacy, and data ownership was more my style. It was pretty easy to hop on the latest security flaw bandwagon and form an uneducated opinion on it.

Or more recently, where I've been taking in a bunch on Stoic Philosophy.

Today, my style is...

Well, that's the thing. I don't know.

Part 2: An Identity Crisis

If you asked me what I did for a living five years ago, I would have told you I was a software developer.

Because that's what I did.

I designed systems, and I wrote code that implemented those systems.

I would have answered you and the conversation would have moved on, probably with a "what about yourself?" follow-up question.

Asking me that same question today might yield the same vocalized response, but internally there's a fiery debate going on with various identities yelling obscenities at each other from behind their podiums, and one very tired debate moderator who has very clearly lost control of the situation.

I'm still a software developer.

I don't see that changing any time soon.

But now there's a fringe candidate who joined the debate, and they're gaining popularity in the polls.

Am I a Creative?

Even now, my mind lashes out whenever I consider that.

On a purely-literal level, of course I am a Creative. To be a Creative is to create, and to write code is that. This was an idea that CGP Grey mentioned in his Spaceship You video during the Covid pandemic.

But to refer to myself as a Creative feels like I just insulted everyone else to whom I've previously considered the true Creatives: photographers, videographers, musicians, painters, writers.

Artists.

People who love their craft so much it's more important to them than breathing.

People who don't want to create: they need to create.

People whose work gives you goosebumps when you take it in, whose work makes you look at things a different way, whose work expands your mind.

The works I create are not that.

Part 3: Experiment

I like the weekly newsletter format. It's great for communicating longer form thoughts. It's not great for experimentation. Short-form social media like Mastodon or X has a role here, as does my site.

I'm looking for a middle ground between the newsletter format and the scribbling in my journal. A place to post ideas with less polish than a typical newsletter format.

So, What's Changing?

I'll be posting less on the weekly newsletter side of things. I'll be posting more shorter form content. A little less polished, a little more often. At most once per day. At least once per week.

It's not for everyone. But you might find value in it.

If you think you might, you can subscribe here. You're not signed up by default.

If you think you won't, that's okay too.