Why don’t I write more?

This evening finds me in a peculiar mood. Since my daughter was born last month, I did not have too much free time in order to just sit down and wonder what shall I do next. However, it seems that on this Easter night, I suddenly have.

If you look at the history of articles on this page, you will see that I generally do not write very much. I usually have an idea or two floating in my head, but apart from the two PyCon CZ entries two years back, I never did sit down and actually wrote something. This unexpected free evening prompted me to think about it some more, and in doing so, try to perhaps break the no-write curse 😉.

When I put together this website, I did it for two broad reasons:

1. To have a personal space to call my own, and to flex my webdesign muscles.
2. To “give back to the community” by writing about technology I use.

Let me expand on the second point: Over the years, I found out that when I want to learn anything tech/software/computer related, the best sources are usually personal blogs of random Internet strangers. They usually wrote about things they (and usually at the moment, I) were passionate about, not omitting warts¹ and describing various neat tricks along the way, which I was only too happy to steal for my use.

To give you some examples, from top of my head:

• fuzzy notepad, which back in the day taught me about using Python practically and elegantly.
• Drew DeVault’s blog, which stoked my interest in Wayland, re-kindled my fondness for system’s programming languages, and showed me that niche stuff can still be usable (and not only cool).
• Luke Smith, who is at times a bit cringy for my tastes, but who continues to be a treasure trove of tips for minimalist software.

So, if one of the goals of the website was to create something like the above, what happened?

The short answer is “procrastination”: I usually feel that I need to shave a lot of yaks before I can write the perfect article on any given topic. As usual, the perfect is the enemy of the good. And even if the above is not true momentarily, I usually chose to relax instead – play a videogame, hack on something inconsequential, watch too many random youtube videos… you get the gist.

Well then. Today I try something new. I just wrote this in one sitting; I will consider translating it also into my native Czech language and then I will publish it, mostly unedited. Enjoy my stream of consciousness; and if you did, wish me luck in writing a more serious and/or more informational article one day 🙂.