The joy of creating

I started out this site as a technical blog. Not because I have a bucket of wisdom, but I take the pleasure in the joy of writing. Looking back at my posting history, it feels disappointing that I was too lazy to put my words out.

I do write a lot. The majority of writing, however, lives in my private journal, notes, or in my professional working life. I spend my days wrestling with technical jargon and then distilling the knowledge into a technical documentation or an architectural proposal.

People don’t expect from me an exceptional writing quality. However, I cannot tolerate a sloppy attitude about it. I care about presenting my ideas as clearly as possible—as if I care about my code. The two vocations are the same to me. I don’t consider myself an “exceptional” writer, but at least for each written document, I always seek for that satisfaction that I have already tried my best.

Due to that reason, at the end of the day, I’m always out of juice to write something about tech, and then publish that knowledge to this blog. Maybe I’m making an excuse for myself, but it’s true. As much as I enjoy programming, life outside of work (with books, music, and nature) are as equally important to me. I despise glueing my eyes to the screen eight hours a day and then repeating that in the evenings and at the weekends.

“You could take some parts of your day work and publish them.” My friend gave advice. “Easy, right?” No, it’s not. Had it been that easy, all the talented people I met could have a splendid technical blog for themselves. One still has to take the effort to select the engaging parts, connect them together, and actually sit down to write them out.

Writing is hard work—at least in my opinion. Some people can hustle through it with their productivity hacks. But I’m not that brilliant; I have to sacrifice time from something else to polish my writing skills and rewrite my drafts. Nevertheless, I love the process of overcoming the challenge and then being able to produce some written words. That’s the joy of creating: it isn’t much, but it’s mine.

The meaning of writing to me

Reading is an inseparable part of my life. After consuming too much information, it feels natural for me to write. Even in the world of programming, I’m a builder, an engineer, rather than a theoretical scientist. Just reading the theories is insufficient.

I try to put my thoughts into words every day. If I don’t have to write a technical documentation at work, I journal. Journaling on a computer does have its benefits, but I’m more honest with my feeling with a real, physical fountain pen and paper. Just like speaking, I cannot go back and fix what I have written. That always gives me a strong sense of movement, of progress.

I used to dump my thoughts too seriously on papers. My writing felt more like “vomiting” rather than making art. Whenever I read back a past entry, it was full of my ego with disconnected sentences. It took me a considerable amount of time to fix this bad habit. I learnt to document my life objectively instead of weeping with my uncontrollable emotions.

This method trains me to deal with problems in life. Whatever happens to me, I try my best not to judge or turn away from the fear.

The future of this blog

As writing has become my hobbies, I have been on polishing my writing skills by referencing The Elements of Style, On Writing Well, and Novelist as a Vocation so far. It’s not that I aim to become a non-fiction writer or a fiction novelist; I just desire to “write as well as I can”—in the words of William Zinsser.

Regarding this blog, I have limited myself by only aiming to write technical posts. From now on, this will be my musing corner, on whatever topics that I like. I don’t wish to be a “thought leader”, so please don’t take my words too seriously.

Neither do I expect this to be read by many people. Maybe I will share it with some friends or family members, or I will keep it only to myself. In any case, writing by keeping a reader in mind will be my practice. That forces me to responsibly structure my sentences to convey my thoughts.