We are so back

There’s this popular meme. I won’t use to visualize it, so describe it instead. As time goes by, you sometimes realize that the things you cared about in the beginning turn out to be true again. Some people say life moves in a spiral.

1. stand-alone personal blog
2. do not care just give me engagement
3. stand-alone personal blog

I’ve had several phases in my life when I tried to blog. This exact site alone is probably 4th reincarnation of it. At one point, I created a separate Tumblr just for a seven-day trip and I still love that blog. Going back and rereading it once every five years gives me chills. Maybe I’ll bring it over here someday, when I figure out a proper way to separate things.

Another time, I used a throwaway name on Blogspot or WordPress. Something that cost me nothing and required zero hassle. And it’s still there. Still working. Still openable after all these years. Still close to zero readers and visitors.

Twenty years ago, I loved writing so much that I did it almost every day. After a while, I decided that what I was producing didn’t look serious enough, and that I needed a more professional blog. Then I decided I wanted to write essays. Exquisitely bad pieces. I guess I just loved the act of typing on a keyboard. They were so bad that I came to an inevitable conclusion — not just to stop, but to shut the whole site down.

And then, ten years later, it became obvious that social media gave you a much bigger boost. It felt great riding that wave: you could easily discover new, interesting people, and they could find you just as easily.

That went on until I started my new full-time job. I had less and less time to write — partly because I was already writing about technology and open source for work, and partly because my energy for “extra” writing was slowly running out. I felt no need, and that was a mistake.

Compare these two images:

Now, in 2025, when most of my social network circles have dissolved and scattered across multiple platforms, I feel a bit of regret. I feel like I missed out having personal web-site empty all these years. So now I care much more about having a permanent place — something that can still be referenced in the future.

And technologically, all pieces have always been right here. It turns out RSS is great. Owning your content feels right.

The only thing left to solve is me having insufficient writing skill. And zero readers.

What makes blog good

Let's start from a weak definition, not saying anything about intristic quality. A blog can be good as a private intellectual artifact, and better if it resonates outward. RSS subscribers makes me happy.

And for that I need consistency. Consistency in writing attempts but keeping the same core, angle, principles. Consistency not in producing reliable mediocrity but in thinking. Keeping posts in drafts for years, never publishing them because they are not good enough is something inevitable.

Üben macht den Meister

This is the most naive but hard truth phrase that everyone hears constantly during any kind of German classes. Another version is that to perfect a new thing, you'll need to do it 10 thousand times. Of course the devil is in the detail. You need Tight Feedback Loop, Deliberate Difficulty (Not Comfort) and Reflection + Correction. A similar take is here on Veritasium.

My plans to try out different things for feedback loop:

• Reading the draft out loud and fixing awkward English
• Rewriting the same paragraph 3 times in one sitting
• A trusted peer review
• A review from AI

So it's muscle memory for writing. And I love to train muscle memory, which usually gained by drills.

You need to have a taste for being self critical and edit in place, so reading and noticing what works for others, a long-term work I'm doing frankly not sufficient for English. Not reading nearly as much books.

Deliberate difficulty is just inishing any post that will pass my internal quality gate. That is deliberate difficulty. Partially because writing in a non-native language increases cognitive load, partially because of an internal quality gate. And of course I want to touch difficult topics. Exposing this definetly makes it risk and increases demand.

Reflection is most confusing to me. Writing and reflecting on your past work instead of touching and silently editing it, is not something I'm used to. I should embrace and track posts I'm embarassed about.

New Year Resolution

Having said that, my goal for next year is simple: to write regularly and finish posts. Not to optimize for reach, and not to wait for confidence, but to treat writing as practice.

Most of the time there will be no feedback. No comments, no replies, no visible signal that anything landed. That silence is part of the process, not a verdict.

So when it’s time to share, I will do it anyway. Publish, step out of my comfort zone, and repeat, trusting that consistency in thinking, difficulty, and reflection compounds, even when no one is watching.