Starting a blog certainly wasn't on the list of things that I'd planned for 2020. Sure, over the past few years I've come to realise that my life could use a little documenting. What's held me back is that I've made it a point to be somewhat careful in maintaining as small an online footprint as I could possibly manage without compromising any social aspects - I'm fairly active on most, if not all the social media that someone my age typically would be, but I've always drawn boundaries for what my audience might be. The shameful thing about this is I've always found that there's been far too little material with which I could go back in time and learn about my old self. My solution, alongside a general sense of being more vigilant with photography, was a toss-up between writing a journal and a blog.
I eventually settled on a multi-purpose blog (we'll get into the multi-purpose aspect later). The pros of a journal - the low overhead and the intimacy and security of pen and paper - simply weren't enough to convince me that I shouldn't also use the blog as a platform to further my experience with front-end frameworks, with the added bonus of being able to easily categorise, sort and filter my musings.
My online paranoia is why this currently unnamed blog with WordPress' default theme is currently running on MAMP on my Early 2015 Macbook Air, a computer with which I'm growing increasingly frustrated with (but let's save those rantings for another blog post, shall we?). I was always somewhat afraid that I'd be haunted by a past version of myself, but this couldn't possibly happen on my own website, right?
The plan is to eventually migrate this blog to a proper hosting service, once I get a couple entries in and know my way around WordPress a little better. Sounds like a classic Faridz toolbox fallacy, I know, but I believe that I'll stick with this one.
As for what this blog might have in store in terms of content, well, that's for future me to decide. Current me, the one writing this blog, has a few ideas, but whether any of those will end up being manifested is up to whether I can keep my motivation. Among those ideas are:
- Reviews of albums, singles and perhaps books
- Pieces about music (songwriting, performing, journalism)
- Updates on my various programming projects
- Posts about various hobbies (e.g. film photography, I'm currently learning Korean but let's see if I keep this up)
- General documenting of my life (I might have to keep this one private though, my insecurity runs deep)
What's nice about this is, yes, I keep track of my decision-making, thought process, my opinions and thoughts at any given time, but I also improve my own writing skills, all the while building a portfolio of sorts. I take it as a win-win situation for me, at the cost of my time and motivation.
Forgive me for the meta-blog blog post to kick things off, but hopefully I'll have more exciting things in store for myself in the future!