Hi, welcome to my blog! I've wanted to build a blog for a while. Over the summer I remade my entire website and now I've finally added a blog to it. I have a variety of objectives and inspirations with this blog, and reasons why I built one on my own website rather than using an existing blogging or social media platform, and for my own sake as much as for anyone reading I want to spend this blog post going over it.

Background & Inspiration

I love blogs. I love the connection formed when readers engage with authors, immersing themselves in the author's stories, ideas, and philosophies.

Before it became mostly locked behind a paywall, I read essays on Medium.com voraciously, articles about UI/UX, character development, politics, science fiction stories, anything I could find. Again, they were little snippets of the authors' minds and lives: the work that they did, little tidbits of skills that they shared, life lessons and personal experience. A couple of YouTube channels, too, I love for the same reason. Kraig Adams and CGP Grey (through his Hello Internet podcast) are some I can think of off the top of my head. Being able to tell stories, express ideas, and connect with readers is something these creators do really well that I look up to and aspire towards.

Then, there are also the internal motivations. I really value self-reflection, being aware of where I'm moving and how I'm presenting myself. Oftentimes I have ideas for things to think about, research, write about, do something more with. These might be art or programming projects, an observation about myself or something in my life, or whatever else. Oftentimes these ideas end up slipping away. Maybe I'll jot it down in my planner or notebook, and maybe I'll even stumble upon it again later. But then it'll be at an inopportune time, and without the initial flash of inspiration I don't have the incentive to pursue it any further.

I have a friend who regularly publishes her personal reflections on a blog. I journal somewhat regularly to recognize and cope with whatever I'm struggling with and capture what I'm learning, but these are often spontaneous and freeform and I feel like I could gain more from my reflections if I cleaned them up into something I could put on a semi-public permanent record. Most of my reflections become common-sense realizations in retrospect, but then it becomes even more valuable looking back through old entries and seeing how I've grown and changed through time.

What Will It Actually Look Like?

I imagine a few main types of content:

• Personal reflections — journal entry style reflections that I think reflect who I am or express an opinion that I believe is valuable enough to publish
• [Project diaries]({{ site.baseurl }}/blog/projects) — snippets of my work, with my development/design thinking, tools I'm using (web dev tutorials!), etc.
• Miscellaneous commentary — appreciation posts or reviews of books, movies, well-designed websites or ads, whatever else I think is interesting that I have thoughts about

The length of posts might range from a short social media-like post with a few links and images and short comments to a thousand-word essay. Whatever it is, I'll strive to make it concise and interesting enough to be worth being published and read.

Why Not Medium or Tumblr?

I could post shortform stuff on Tumblr or Twitter and longer essays and reflections on Medium and link them all on my personal website. It would have lots of ease-of-use benefits and make content a lot easier to discover, comprehend, and share. To be honest, I'm not super sure about this blog. Like most things I'm doing, it's an experiment subject to change. I've used other platforms in the past and might just find that it's the better solution in the future.

But this uncertainty is exactly why I want to have my own blog that I have control over. More than anything else, this blog is designed to push me and give me learning opportunities: a blank canvas to hone my processes of reflection, communication, and expression.

That's it for this first post! I have a lot of ideas for things to write and website features to add, so check back later (or judge from the future) how things played out!