Introducing My Blog

Recently my partner suggested that we each write in a diary which we share with each other once a week. Diary-keeping being new to me, I expected this to be amusing at first but potentially a chore later, however I was surprised at how much pleasure I got from it. Even writing about daily mundanities was gratifying.

While I haven't quite figured it out yet, it appears to me that something about putting our thoughts down onto paper forces us to slow down and spend more time formulating them, compared to the normal frantic pace that they are milling around in our heads, rarely pausing on one long enough to inspect it thoroughly.

This diary writing triggered in me the desire to spend more time writing long-form content, something which I have barely done since school, which is what I'm having my very first punt at now.

Writing for no one

I don't currently have intentions of sharing or publicising this blog and regardless, I'm not really confident enough in the quality of my writing that it wouldn't be embarrassing to do so. It may be that no one beyond the occasional friend or family member I share this with reads it and that the writing is mostly for me alone, however in my view this isn't deflationary.

I have a vague recollection of watching a video a while ago titled something like "The Streamers That No One Watches". It was about creators on Twitch who stream and never get any viewers, some of them for years. There is even a website dedicated to discovering these channels.

Why do they persist in it? Why don't they just play games alone and save the hassle?

Unfortunately I can't find the video anymore, but from memory the conclusion was somewhat reductive, suggesting that these streamers were just exceedingly patient for the delusional chance that they would one day make it big and be the next Ninja or Shroud. You can find the same denigrating view that these are professional time-wasters expressed ad-nauseum elsewhere on the internet.

This may be partially true, however I think this phenomenon has a secondary more compelling dimension.

Even with the knowledge that they are vanishingly unlikely to ever get more than a small handful of viewers, the act of producing content that is pushed out to the world forces the streamer into a different mindset than if they were playing in private. The streamer who has no viewers is still obligated to talk to the camera and engage with the (imaginary) audience.

Perhaps they will try different games that they otherwise wouldn't have played for the sake of the stream.

Perhaps they cheat off camera, but shame keeps them playing fair when they go live.

Perhaps they will be introspective about their gameplay in ways they otherwise wouldn't have.

The basic act of their content being public and discoverable, even if it never is discovered, has a dramatic influence (an arguably positive one) on their mindset during their leisure time.

This may seem a little trite when talking about recording oneself playing video games, but I think there is something to learn from it that we can take into other domains. It's with this same spirit that I approach writing this now. Sharing my thoughts out to the world (even if the world is, in reality, no one) will implicitly motivate me to be more precise with my words. It will make me stop and think of opposing viewpoints before stating an idea with conviction that I would otherwise not hesitate in articulating in private.

On a less grandiose note, it's hopefully just a chance to practise my writing in a way I haven't done in over a decade.

What I'll write about

The content of this blog will be entirely miscellaneous and just whatever I find compelling enough to put into text. Maybe programming. Maybe book reviews. Maybe a train of thought that I find interesting.

At the very least, it will be a modicum of humanity in an otherwise dead internet.

Footnote - About the tech

This website uses Tailwind Nextjs Starter Blog, a blogging starter template using Next.js and Tailwind CSS.

I knew I wanted to use markdown to write blog posts, for which Hugo or Jekyll are probably the most popular frameworks, but I ended up going with this template because:

I wanted a chance to play with Next.js and Tailwind
It gives me a bit more power to customise
The UI is slick

On top of this I've made a few initial modifications, mainly to remove functionality I'm not interested in and tweak a few things to my personal taste. I intend to extend upon it over time.

The site is hosted as a static site on GitHub Pages, which is deployed conveniently with a workflow triggered on each push to main.