Hello World!

The first point is almost self-explanatory, although I feel like giving the actual details will make it even clearer. Where do I seek that perfection? Everywhere, I guess. In the past few years, I spent so much time figuring out the perfect workflow for me before even thinking about what I wanted to write about. It could be due to the proclivity I have into solving the technical challenges (I still pursued engineering education) but I think it's fair to attribute it to my (sometimes crippling) perfectionist side. I actually once even got to a point where I was satisfied with the workflow, very unixy by the way, with a simple makefile and my own static site generator. But even then, when I started to write a few posts, I never completed them because I felt the content wasn't good enough… Although I tackled the interesting problematic (that wasn't very documented at the time) of making Go work with NixOS and succeeded. So I don't question this aspect of me was preventing me from publishing anything. And as if to validate that, is that I recently found out an amazing philosopher that posts about different thing Emacs, philosphy and politics. When reading his essay On selfhood I actually realized my perfectionism might be more harmful than beneficial. Since then I strive to really avoid falling to deep into this perfectionist mindset and let myself call something "finished" or "done" even when it's not yet perfect. The implication is that I don't feel a task such as writing a blog that overwhelming now and it makes it easier to get started. And since we're working in the digital world here, it's so easy to come back and fix a mistake or edit a phrasing if I feel there is an issue with something. Basically my way of overcomming this hurdle is attempt to use reason against an irrational tendency of mine supported by the realization that the irrational tendency is harmful.

On the second point, I never thought of myself as someone with low self worth. But the reason I mention it as a reason is because it might actually be the case more than I think. On thing that would prevent me from publishing those writings or simply start writing about my ideas would be that I wonder who am I to even have an opinion that matters that much. So what is the point even to bother writing something. This is also due to my opinion changing quite a lot from a week to another. As an example, right now I am using Emacs with Org-mode to write and publish this blog, I actually was already considering this before, but then I decided to create my own static site generator in Nim and when doing so I once decided I would write things in markdown, then I changed for raw html… Let's say that my convictions and opinions were rather flexible. Now that I am thinking about it, it might be some kind of imposter syndrome where I don't feel well read enough to make an educated decision when it comes to technicalities. An educated decision or a perfect decision… And now the circle is complete. This second point is most probably linked to the first in more ways than I think. But anyways, the way to overcome this was simply to understand that I am not exactly writing for others. Initially I write for myself, kind of like a cathartic activity, and then should I hope that it may benefit others. Understanding this also helps me to be slightly less strict with myself with regards to the content I am going to publish.

With those two hurdles overcome, the last little push I needed was a few ideas on what to write and fortunately enough I recently resolved an issue I had been dragging along for more than a year on OpenBSD on my thinkpad and I've finally found what was the issue after a good month of investigation. I also recently made some improvement to forth-mode for Emacs. More on those things later, but those two things where enough to let me know I had plenty of things to write about and so here I am, writing much less painfully on the Qwerty layout because I reverted it midway as the strain was too great to focus on writing well.