Trying something new

My last post was in December, 2024. A lot of things have happened since then. Most importantly I'm a father now, with very little time to sit in front of the computer.

In the past I have looked at blogging as career blogging. I'm a developer, after all, a senior one at that, so I'm expected to write blog posts, surely! And that, whether real or imagined, I have internalised.

But with it came invisible baggage: namely what you put out into the world wide web should be representative of the person and/or developer that I am! All serious and very knowledgeable and everything!

Because of that, I have stressed about the posts I did eventually put out. Hours went into what to write, how to write, in what way to present, how to show what examples, whether they make sense, that the post should be long enough, the list goes on.

And with very little time at hand, spending hours stressing on posts to put out seemed like an effort-exceeds-benefit kinda scenario. Something I eventually decided to yeet into the void because no way I'm gonna spend energy on this.

So F that. To repeat the title, I'm trying something new.

Starting now, new approach: I will (hopefully) write about things that interest me. I will not care if it interests the (probably non-existent) reader. I will also not stress about the word choices, the length of a post, to not repeat the same words in the same sentence because repeating words is bad.

I am also splitting the writing into two distinct phases: writing and structuring. The writing phase I do myself. The structuring phase I will utilise an LLM to help me out. BUT only as an editor with no say in writing. Only structural suggestions.

This is the prompt I'm using with ChatGPT:

Your role is: editor in chief. Below you will find a post I'm going to publish for a mostly software development related blog.

Your job is to read the pasted post and point out any inconsistencies, strands that need to be tied up, hard to follow structure / logic

Be kind, to the point, and thorough. Don't suggest whole paragraphs, but do point out the ones that stand out as bad.

If you have no notes, say as such.

This way I hope to not be stalled in the actual writing because I keep thinking of how I should be structuring the content being written. So far it has worked wonderfully with this post.