Initial Commit

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Well, not really.

The truth is that I created the setup and deployment workflow for this website over a year ago, and I have nearly 100 not-even-close-to-finished drafts of posts on various topics or projects which themselves are half-finished at best. I haven’t been doing a great job of keeping track of what I’m up to or what I’ve been learning, and at this point it’s probably time to just bite the bullet and finally make a damn post to my damn blog.

If you’d asked me what my goal was at the time I first conceived of this site, I would have said something like “I want to keep a blog as a form of documentation and a way of sharing the things I’ve done.” Which is a noble sentiment, but it really puts a lot of pressure on things to be as accurate and cut-and-dry as possible. Looking at my drafts, I was never going to reach the level of detail and accuracy I was looking for (and even if I did, it would have been a bit of a slog to read through). Instead, I think I’m going to look at this as a place to reflect on what I’m doing, keep track of advances I make on projects or in personal endeavours, and maybe create a paper trail of things I care about for future reference as a sort of side-effect.

Lately I’ve been exploring a similar practice by posting interesting synth patches I come across on mastodon, and have been surprised how much that has paid off for me in terms of creative satisfaction. I’m easily able to share those links with my friends (even if they’re not on mastodon) and have developed a satisfying workflow for quickly capturing audio and video as a result. I’m able to look back on my week and see sparks of creativity and intrigue which I can re-visit, and I’m hoping that eventually I can use the community as a forum for help on projects I’m struggling with. All of these things may seem like basic aspects of online life, but because I’ve mostly refrained from participation in social platforms in the past these things are refreshing and invigorating to me. Here at the end of 2024, I feel like I may finally be finding a combination of outlets which suit my personality and can be used constructively to compliment my efforts.

Despite my positive experiences so far, I think making this a long-term change will be a challenge for me because I have always had an adversarial relationship with my own output. Even as I type this, I catch myself over-proofreading and restructuring my paragraphs too much. I find myself concerned that I haven’t ironed out per-post images yet, or that the ‘movies’, ‘ferments’, and ’notes’ section are not in a coherent state, or that I’d really like to have more than one post before I publish this website. But at a certain point the time comes to shitpost or get off the pot. Maybe the winds are blowing differently for me these days. I’m looking forward to seeing where this takes me.

Meta on Ian's Blog

Initial Commit

Well, not really.