Four Wins From Twenty Years of Blogging

A Friday Hodgepodge

Twenty years ago today, as a belated birthday gift to myself, I started this blog. I got the idea from a conversation at the pub with a fellow scientist who also writes on the side.

The fact that I have outlasted this once-hot medium is a source of both amusement and consternation to me. I will reflect on this, mostly privately.

That said, all such thinking must include both the positives and the negatives, and so it is that I shall kick off my thinking with four wins from my longstanding practice of writing about something most mornings, and tossing it out into the ether...

***

Image by Nick Stephenson, via Unsplash, license.

1. The daily routine has kept me abreast of many things I am interested in through the act of tracking various news sources.

Putting down my thoughts on some of theses things has also had value from the catharsis of being able to say something someone might see and consider, all the way to serving as research notes for more fully fleshed-out pieces.

2. Supporting the routine -- particularly while my wife was completing her medical training and I was caring for two very young children -- led to me becoming more adept at computing.

Believe it or not, I learned Emacs while typing this blog one-handed on a netbook during the wee hours while holding my son. (The editor for my blogging platform was that frustrating to use, and I had always been curious about Emacs, anyway.)

During the same time, I developed code to check news sources and aggregate headlines into a web page I could look through on my phone. This saved me from wasting time finding something to comment on, and allowed me to use odd moments to read or think about interesting things I found.

I eventually realized that, rather than just overwrite this log, I could save each day's collection by date to aid research for more difficult pieces.

3. When I was dealing with young kids and moving around the countryside, I was pretty isolated from other adults, often even including my wife when she was on call. Blogging and subsequent conversations that resulted from it were often the only "adult time" I got for days at a time.

Kids at that age are cute, and I wouldn't trade that time for anything in the world, but...

It is hard. There are so many basic needs to attend to, and it is not much of an exaggeration to say that a major part of your job is to keep them from killing themselves. Even the most loving parent needs regular breaks from that.

4. Last but not least, my writing has attracted a regular audience of intelligent, thoughtful people, and helped me make or maintain several friendships. This has been the biggest and best surprise from blogging.

Thank you.

-- CAV