An Obligatory “Hello World” Post

I haven’t read Gatsby’s full Terms and Conditions, but I’m pretty sure that legally you’re required to write a post about why you’re using Gatsby instead of something like Medium or Wordpress.

So let’s get that part out of the way. Aside from being a shiny new technology I’ve wanted to play with for a while, Gatsby is also has some nice features. It’s quite fast right out of the box and renders blog posts from Markdown files, which lets me write using the tools I already love. Gatsby is React-based, I can feel a little less guilty while procrastinating from my real job of building a React app.

Why am I compelled to blog again after having a blog in 2002-ish that petered out around 2013? The big reason is that I miss the way public writing helped improve my thinking.

For the past year or so I’ve been doing a lot more writing as part of a morning journalling routine. I treat journalling as an ephemeral act, helpful for framing my day and forcing me to work through issues I might subconsciously be trying to ignore. The entries are useful in that specific moment but aren’t intended to be referenced again in the future.

But every once in a while I write something that feels like it should be out in the world. Either because publishing will force me to think through my position, or because someone else may find it useful.

So that’s where we are. Hopefully, you find something of value here. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter if you want to chat. 🖖