Happy Friday! When it comes to blogging and writing I hold two opinions that are diametrically opposed to each other. The first is that good writing requires thought and patience...and that really good writing comes from taking something you've written and then deleting every word that isn't necessary. Often writing and rewriting the same thing until it's as good as you can possibly make it. Frequently leaving unsatisfied. On the other hand, blogging or journaling is more about the practice, and therefore it is much more important to get the words out than it is to get the words right.
I typically blog like I tweet, and for similar reasons. Tweets don't have edit buttons and my blog engine (for whatever reason) doesn't have a spell checker. Add to that the fact that the i key on my keyboard is extremely sensitive, happily spitting out a string of iiii's if I even hover my finger near the key, and it sort of begins to offer an excuse for my blogging "style".
I always want to improve though, so I think that I need to strike a better balance between the two. Someone I've recently learned about is Leslie Lamport, no intro required unless you live under a rock like me, so for all of my fellow rock dwellers, he's a famous Computer Scientist and Mathematician who has invented a number of well-known algorithms. More relevant to my recent interests though, he invented something called TLA+, which is a language for describing algorithms in such a way that their correctness can be formally proved. I'm a Computer Scientist with a minor in Applied Mathematics and I find this idea intriguing because one of my favorite things about math has always been the idea that you can formally prove something to be correct.
Introduction out of the way, I've been listening to some of his talks and trying to read some of his papers and one of the things he said struck me as important, "you should really care about what you write, because people will judge you by your writing, and you don't want people to think you're an idiot". Obviously he's right, but where does that leave someone like me who just wants to jam on their keyboard and go? I'm assuming no one is reading my blog posts but me, but what happens if they do?
I had to think about it for a bit, ways to improve without really changing my process, so first I decided to get a real text editor. I'm using Obsidian, it's a pure markdown text editor, no AI features that I'm aware of but I'm using the free version. I also decided that as part of my writing process I'd start re-reading my own posts, updating them, adding links, improving them as I go.
I guess that's it for now, til next time 🙋🏽♂️
P.S. I should probably get a new keyboard too, any recommendations to replace my logitech solar powered K750?