Again, from the top
And a one, two, three
TL;DR I’m restarting this newsletter. Expect a 5-20 minute read every Sunday. It will be a mélange of topics related to open societies, software engineering, and whatever else strikes me.
Sometimes life comes at you faster than others. Without belaboring the point, I’ve had personal and professional stuff to deal with since my last post.
I also found myself a bit asea (thanks crosswordese) as to what I was trying to do with this space and while I got a lot of positive feedback from people who were already kindly disposed to me, I didn’t really feel like I was finding a niche I was looking to use this space for.
And, to be honest, I found my approach to be ponderous and pedantic. The hifalutin aims combined with an overly dogmatic and technical approach just didn’t seem to hit and the writing was taxing.
In that vein, I wanted to try something different. I was inspired by this series to better and more modestly establish what I want to do with this space.
Goals
Develop nascent business ideas
I want this to be a space where I can conceive, incubate, and develop the seeds of what may develop into business or career opportunities for myself (and maybe others) in the future. I’ve honed my edge solving other people’s’ problems but now I want to see if I can find any gordian knots worth cutting on my own.
Pitch conversational solutions
I want to try and present more readable and conversational pieces. This means to some extent abandoning the dogmatic technical approach I’ve previously taken and doing something lighter that hopefully comes across as less of a slog and more inviting to discussion.
Find my voice
I want to write for myself. With apologies to Bukowski, even if it doesn’t come roaring out of me, I want to drive myself to do this. The gravity of effort and inertia feel irresistible and there’s no escaping the surly bonds of earth but there’s accomplishment in completing a piece and reveling in the flesh and color of an idea that is no longer a mere mental conception but a fully—half-baked idea.
And, I want it for my progeny. Although, I don’t believe my children will look any more kindly on my efforts than any children look upon their parents’ work back to the beginning of time, the mere existence of some artifact of interior life seems like something that would be of interest, and something I wish I had from my parents; and, it’s either this or a GeoCities page listing my favorite books and movies, something to sate my Ozymandian ego.
Audience
Who: Passionate Software Engineers
Why: My peers. These are the people I want to get excited to build together and convince there is something here more worthwhile than the next VC carrot or serving a giant with a golden goose.
Who: Adventurous Clients/Customers
Why: These are the folks who have a problem and want to solve it better and are in a position to take a step in a different direction but want someone to work with them to find the path forward.
Who: Fellow Travelers
Why: The quiet gardening of making better societies through small, pragmatic changes.
How
You’ll receive a new piece in your inbox every Sunday morning. Again, some of them will be about open societies, some of them will be about Software Engineering, some will be moonshots. I’ve tried to build up a backlog of ideas and finished pieces so I can hopefully avoid any further disruptions to this regularly scheduled programming until the next pivot that is.
The formula is going to remain roughly the same:
State the problem
Define the correctness conditions
Propose a Solution
The proof will be in the pudding.
So, without further ado
Postscript
In addition to the already reference article, and Bukowski poem, so you want to be a writer? My other main source of inspiration for this approach is Haruki Murakami’s relentlessly workmanlike Novelist as a Vocation.