I started because I wanted to think about transportation policy but my work as a Data Scientist wouldn't let me. I continued because a colleague convinced me it could help position me as a thought leader and get me a new job or engagements. More recently it's been a way to complain about the absurdities of mega corp life, awful past coworkers and jobs, etc. without being too obvious about it (hopefully).
But also I have always enjoyed writing and producing. Just passively consuming the internet leaves me feeling a little empty. Also I hate the short, singular point of view, short attention span, social media, everything we say and write getting neutered and just made worse by communications and legal departments world.
blog: https://kennethswindow.com/
I used to think that blogging was a way to help me build a platform, get my name out there. Nowadays ... I don't know. Sometimes I have thoughts that interest me - but probably nobody else - so I'll craft a post around them and put the results online. Sharing my creations makes me feel happy. I'll spam a link to the post on Facebook in case any of my friends might be interested in reading it. Lately I've been spamming links to HN, Bluesky, etc because: why not?
I mostly write to do postmortems of the issues i faced while solving some problem. It helps because i tend to forget how i did something or what was the reasoning behind it.Sometimes i just write stories for the sake of writing they are not very good but they amuse me luckily it has 0 viewership (except me) so i am safe in venting whatever i want.
Just for myself. Helps me consolidate my own thoughts and learnings. Sometimes I google something and my own blog comes up. That gives me a bit of a laugh (and is sometimes useful).
It forces me to rotate the shapes of ideas; my beliefs become more durable when I'm willing to explore differing views through the act of writing (or it exposes how weak my initial take is)
I'm just getting started blogging despite having run sites since the late 00s.
I mostly want to blog to sharpen my writing skills, produce something useful that I can point to as mine (and isn't at the whims of a platform), and to have fun on the sysadmin side of running the VPS, domain, traffic, etc.
I write to deepen my own understanding. Explaining concepts to others forces me to organize my thoughts and fill in gaps I didn't realize I had.
Two reasons:
- It got me my last job, so I figured it might get me my next
- I have fun doing it
I blog to think more clearly.
It’s utterly pointless to outsource this to ChatGPT. I need to muddle through with my slow dumb human words trying to explain my thinking against the social pressure of not looking stupid in public. Only then do I truly battle-test an idea.