As a kid I was enchanted with the idea of blogging. The idea of making my mark on the internet one blog post at a time. I created many blogs growing up, each one about whatever topic was holding my attention at the time.
The very first blog I made was a video game review blog, and the first (and only) post was a review of Super Mario World on the SNES, during a time when the Wii was the latest Nintendo console.
My motivation stemmed from a magazine called Game Informer. Each month I would get a new issue in the mail, and I was excited to hear what was happening in the world of video games. I loved reading their articles and reviews, and I wanted to be a part of it.
Although my game review blog may not have been useful to anyone, I did it for myself and I was happy with it.
The next couple blogs I made were about other topics such as Minecraft, a now-defunct game studio I wanted to start, and Unity game development. But today none of those blogs exist anymore, not even leaving a digital trace on the internet.
So what makes this time different?
A blog can be many things, a personal journal, a travel photoblog, even a video game devlog. Despite their diverse differences, all of them share one key component: they are a window to the writer's soul.
When you read someone's writing, you are reading more than just words on a page, you catch a glimpse of their life experiences, expressed through their writing style and word choice, their emotions and reactions, and the topics they chose to write about or not.
But just as it is a window for others to peer into, it is a window for me to learn more about myself. By writing down my thoughts, it gives me the opportunity to critically think them over.
Thoughts in my head are fuzzy and ephemeral. Words are concrete and lasting.
Blogging is also an opportunity to learn in public, where you write about what you learned as if you were writing for someone else—because in a couple months you will be.
Have you ever come back to something you were writing, only to not remember the train and thoughts it was based off of? As programmers we comment our code not just for ourselves, but for others and our future selves who will not remember why we wrote it this way.
This is what learning in public is about. By writing down how we learned something as if we were writing for someone else, we can then quickly pick it back up later.
So what do I want to blog about exactly? Well, whatever I feel like writing about, I suppose! I have thoughts about all kinds of topics I'd like to gush about, ideas for future game projects I want to share, and writing devlogs for the games I develop. No doubt there will be more things I'll share here when the mood strikes!
This will be my personal outlet to share what I think, what I learn, and what I experience. It will help guide me to improve my writing and articulate my thoughts clearer, even if nobody else is reading.
It will be my little slice of the internet.
