It has been a while and it seems that this venture is about to suffer the same fate as so many of my other projects have in the past. Over the years I have started several projects with grand ambitions only to see them go nowhere as I find myself jumping from one interesting rabbit hole to another.

Why did I do it? Well, the allure of creating someting new, the curiostiy of learning and discovering something has had the better of me on so many occasions. It has helped me learn and grow of course but I feel I have nothing to show for it.

But none of that explains why I would set up a website and then abandon it for almost a year. After all, writing and maintaining a blog is something I have always wanted to do. When I was a teenager, I read enormous amounts of Tolklien and I always wanted to write and to create elaborate and fantastical worlds with their own sets of traditions, languages and deep history. There was a time I would dream of a future version of me that was a brilliant author with perhaps the same pedigree as my idol. I would end up becoming quite disappointed in myself when I would actually sit down to write something and I could never really manage to produce anything interesting. I was fourteen after all and soon enough, I concluded that creating the next epic saga was just not something I was cut out for.

It’s pretty evident I was setting myself up for failure from the get go. Lofty ambitions are good but sometimes it’s better to just start, take small steps, stumble, find your footing and most of all, keep going!.

After I set up this blog and wrote the first post, I began wondering about all the things that I could put in here. The myriad of topics I was interested in and I wanted to write about. Should I write about programming? About the projects that I was working on?(there’s always something), about all the things that I am reading about currently, a bit of history here, a bit of philosophy there. Oh and I shouldn’t forget to sprinkle some politcs on top of it all! What should my writing style be? Should I be all casual and approchable or should I be a bit more detached and serious? I am going to write about everything and it is going to be wonderful - or so I thought.

You see, when I would actually sit down to write, a blank digital page staring at me with a blinking cursor eagerly waiting for my words I would discover that I had too many things that I felt I wanted to write about but I could never really decide what to actually write. I knew I wanted to write about programming but what exactly do I write about? The possibility space was too large. I had to narrow it down and since I couldn’t think about what to write about right away, I thought I should take some time and think about it for a few days. This was my own website after all, and not like I had people eagerly waiting for my next masterpiece. Days became weeks, weeks became months. And here we are.

I still don’t know what to write about, which is why I have been writing about how I don’t know what to write about(that was meta!). Doesn’t matter. I do realize that instead of waiting for something good to pop up in my head I’d rather work towards something good. Sure, in the beginning I’m going to stumble a lot and probably ramble a lot and talk in circles. Still, I feel there’s value in creating and shipping things sometimes even if they might not exactly be ready. I have been hesitent to putting something out there because of my inherent fear of failing to meet my own standards, its time to fail again, and publicly this time. I’m hoping it’ll provide the necessary encouragement to overcome whatever mental obstacles I feel prevent me from progressing.

So here’s the plan, to write at least one post every week, there may be more than one but not less. And I hope to increase that number with time. There’s no particular topic or length or format that I’m aiming for. The goal right now is to build some momentum and to maintain it. Some time in the future I might look back at this an cringe but hey, we all have to start somewhere! It would probably serve as a good indicator that I have made some progress because in my opinion, the only person it’s worthwile to compare against is the past version of yourself. Onwards then, until next time.