On writing

I’ve always seen blogging as a drag, but I envy people who put words out in the open. Take my colleague Misha for example. He makes blogging seem so effortless and it almost feels as If I'm having a casual conversation with him during our work day. I love reading his blog because of its various topics, it's not over-edited or click-baited, and it makes me feel closer to him.

The envy mainly comes from my lack of transparency; I'm bad at documentation and thus have troubles to show people what I've done or thought of. Sometimes this becomes a bottleneck because I can't easily refer to something I've built or written. Also transparency to yourself is important: I believe writing can be a form of meditation and guide you to deeper realisations.

With opening up, you also make yourself more vulnerable. Having lived in a politically oppressed country and having an interested for infosec, I'm quite paranoid on publishing things which enable (future) abuse. So although I wish I could be more open about certain things, I don't want to take any risk.

Another thing I don't like about writing things on the internet is that it's quite static. A lot of things I granted for true in the past, I disagree with now. Writing on the internet has no notion of debunking and people take a single paragraph for face value, without reading updates/edits. So, don't be surprised if these posts are deleted or edited in the future.

Oh and there's me not being a native speaker and trying to always being political correct. Natural languages are infused with culture, which turn it into a minefield. It's really easy to say something wrong although you mean something completely innocent. In the past I've made unintended inappropriate remarks while discussing sensitive topics, which were frowned upon and I didn't even realise I was saying something wrong. This is even more likely in written text, so please call me out when I say something which can be interpreted wrongly.

I've tried blogging in the past and this is going to be yet another attempt. "Don't attempt, because if you do you will fail guaranteed", said one of my teachers once. I hope to enjoy this attempt while it lasts.

Published at Wed, 01 May 2019 10:54:18 GMT