We've taken a big bite out of 2024 already; a month and some change in, I've had a chance to examine my thoughts on something that's been lurking in the back of my skull for the last few months: what the heck is worth writing about?

Having a website is one of those things that a front end dev was, up until a point, expected to have. It was the weather-beaten sign hung in front of our digital door, announcing our intent to the world: I build websites. I am good at it. If you pay me, I'll do it too. Fresh content is a must to keep eyeballs (and SEO interest) on a site; hence, blogging.

The Struggle

I've always struggled with blogging, or any sort of regular "content creation."

A bit about me: I chafe against the concept of "being passionate about software development." How many plumbers are passionate about channel locks? How many cashiers are deeply invested in the latest point of sale technology? Not many, I'd wager. I'm in a similar boat: I don't necessarily care about the act of coding as a practice; building for the web stopped being cool/art/punk the day that we collectively decided to divorce design from front end development. Instead, I care about what I'm doing with my code.

Why is that relevant to the title of this post? Well, over the last few months, I've opened the editor UI for this blog, stared at a blinking cursor, sighed, and closed the tab.

I'm a front end developer with noting to write about front end development itself.

Don't get me wrong, I have opinions on my trade.

  • CSS-in-JS? Hate it. CSS is fine the way it is. Stop trying to avoid learning something because it's not Javascript.
  • React? I'll ask you why you chose it, and suggest alternatives.
  • Web Components? Love them. I think they're a big piece in breaking the choke-hold that the big app libraries/frameworks have on UI development in JS-heavy environments, and a way to more fully deliver on the promises of interoperability and progressive enhancement that we make the second we type out our first <!DOCTYPE html>.
  • Unionization in tech? Solidarity forever.

But how many of my opinions on web development are actually worth writing about when other people have written similar thoughts down sooner, with a broader reach, and with a more practiced delivery? That's a big shrug from me, buckaroo.

But I do know a thing or two about a thing or two outside of web development.

Wresting Personal Space from the Beast of Professionalism

So this brings me back to the question in the title of this post: why the heck should I blog? It also brings me back to the underlying thoughts: Who is this blog supposed to be for? What would I even feel strongly enough to spend 10-30 minutes sitting down to write about?

Well... I like a lot of things:

  • Building my own mechanical keyboards
  • Old-school tabletop RPGs, whether dragon-, Lovecraft-, or grim-flavored
  • Writing code to make running and playing TTRPGs easier
  • Painting miniatures for tabletop gaming or display
  • Using AI models and prompt engineering to make digital friends.

During my period of prolonged unemployment in the back half of 2023, I found myself doing most of the above because I just enjoyed them. I wasn't bored for a single day that I was without work, because there was always something cool to read, write, and do.

Way back at the start of my career, I was taught, implicitly and explicitly, that a professional image should be groomed and manicured and tightly controlled. I mean, look at this site! It's built to convey that I know how to do clean layout with a minimum of code in a CMS. Its aesthetic – sterile by design, with a little edge thrown in – screams "I am a professional adult, and I should be taken seriously." It's shaped like a website, because I built it to show people that I know how to make website-shaped things.

Such a gentle, hesitant touch in cultivating this work-focused psychic double, with its website- and app-shaped trappings, has led to me completely freezing when called to wear its digital skin. My tongue swells in my mouth when I try to speak using its voice.

That's a whole lot of words to say, I'm tired of playing at inauthenticity over the fear that it might jeopardize my future job prospects. After over half a year where I had zero luck even landing an interview, I'm not sure that image matters all that much anymore.

As for why I should write about, well, anything? The catharsis of screaming into the void, perhaps, or the stray hope that someone, anyone, will find some value in what I write. So let's talk about some clickity-clack math rocks. Maybe some code will show up here and there. We'll figure it out.