exploring something new

Last night I had an idea about starting a blog. Random at first, but now it starts to make sense. Not for the sake of having a blog, but as a tool, a notepad where I can brain dump everything I feel about coding.

It started from a thought: I'm an optimizer, constantly tuning every aspect of my life, coding included… but I also know you learn the most from coding when you do it out of passion, with no goal attached. So I got stuck in this loop where I wanted mastery in software development and I also wanted to do it purely for fun, while being aware that I probably can't do it purely for fun if mastery is sitting in the back of my head.

That's a vicious loop, because it feels like purgatory: I know what I want and how to get it, but to get it I have to not want it in the first place… that's impossible, right?

So I wrote all this down and started reading it again... and then it dropped out of nowhere: what if I start a blog that does nothing for my career? A journal, where I drop whatever's in my head about programming. That way I'm free to publish stuff that's unfinished, unstructured, messy. And I honestly like this a lot. I don't even know if I'll show it to anybody, I'm still thinking about it.

And I just realized, while writing this, that putting my concerns on paper gave me… enthusiasm to write code. The thing I wanted all along.

I just needed to stop chasing it, trust my gut, and do whatever I actually felt like doing…

And that's amazing.