Back in high school, my English teacher gave the class some pretty solid advice: start a blog. She talked about how writing forces you to turn “I kinda get it” into “I can explain it”, how your ideas get clearer once you try to put them into words, and how it leaves a trail of progress you can look back on later. I was a teenager at the time, so I ignored that great advice and carried on my merry way.

More than a decade into my career, I regret not giving it a go sooner. Part of the appeal for me is the steady practice of communication skills, which I use every day in a leadership role and find invaluable.

Another motivation, and probably the main one, is to track my projects and learnings over time. A common pattern in my side projects is that there’ll be some fundamental piece of tech I want to play with or figure out, so I’ll go on a quest until I’m satisfied with what I’ve learnt and then… I shelve it.

I’m not saying shelving projects is a bad thing, especially since my goals usually align more with acquiring specific knowledge from working with a particular piece of tech than with finishing a polished prototype. But I do want to build a portfolio of learnings, and writing about them regularly feels like the best way to do that.

So this is my blog. I’ll be posting about the projects I’m working on and the things I’ve learnt along the way.