Why I've started writing (and joined the /now movement)

This site has had a blog for a couple of weeks now, and this is the slightly awkward post where I explain why it exists. Every blog seems to have one. Apparently mine is no exception.

Why write at all#

I've been building software for over ten years, and in that time plenty has happened worth writing down. I wrote none of it down. Lessons learned the hard way, projects that went sideways, the odd genuine achievement: all of it lives in my head, getting fuzzier by the year.

So this blog is me fixing that. It'll cover personal achievements and the struggles behind them, alongside professional thoughts and insights. Occasionally I might even offer something resembling advice, though I'd treat that with the scepticism it deserves.

There's a selfish reason too. Writing something down forces you to actually understand it. It's easy to hold a vague opinion; it's much harder to defend one in full sentences. If the only reader this blog ever gets is a slightly clearer-thinking version of me, that's still a return.

Early days, honestly#

There are a handful of posts up already: my first IRONMAN 70.3, what a year of AI has done to my job, handing over my first freelance builds. I'll probably go back and edit them as the writing improves. And there's a small backlog of things I already want to talk about, which for someone who has never kept a blog alive before feels dangerously like optimism.

No promises on cadence. I have a full-time job, side projects, triathlon training and a family. Posts will arrive when they're ready and I dont want to write blog posts for the sake of it.

The /now page, and nownownow#

While building this site I added a /now page: a short, honest snapshot of what I'm focused on at the moment. Work, what I'm building, training, what I'm reading and watching.

What I didn't know when I added it is that now pages are a whole movement, started by Derek Sivers back in 2015. There's a directory of them at nownownow.com: people all over the world keeping a simple page that answers the question you'd ask a friend you hadn't seen in a year. What are you up to these days?

I think it's a great initiative, so I submitted mine, and I'm now listed. The deal you make with a now page is that you keep it current; a stale one is just a then page. I'll update mine as much as I can, which given how often life changes at the moment should keep it busy.

That's the plan. A blog for the things worth writing down, a now page for what's happening right now, and a backlog that will hopefully shrink faster than it grows. See you in the next post.