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Writing

I have always enjoyed writing. It probably comes as no surprise from someone whose first article you are about to read. It all comes from a close affinity with words. How beautiful, vibrant, and alive they can seem. Only, when it comes down to it, words are merely containers, nothing else, their significance comes from what meaning and symbols are assigned to them. Though, it’s not only about their immediate meaning either: words, and the way they are woven into sentences, offer much more to our senses than their mere definitions. They tell a story, a story about the writer, their personality, their background, their circumstance at the moment of writing, and much more. That’s one of the most beautiful things about human communication. That’s one of the most beautiful things in life.

I have always enjoyed reading as well, writing and reading are just two sides of the same coin. Reading should not be mistaken for a passive activtiy either, it’s a conscious effort to attempt to understand the meaning that is being put forward by the writer. It requires a commitment from the receiving party, and oftentimes at least as much effort as is being deployed by the writer. In case you are a reader of mine, and you have made it this far, thank you, truly.

As I have hinted at throughout the last paragraph, writing and reading truly shine in their interaction, in our interaction, you and I. Our minds are connected at this moment, yours is hearing, grasping, and hopefully understanding through your own circumstance, the thoughts that are being put forward by mine. In reading my thoughts, you may find that you are forgetting yourself, your immediate surroundings, and your personal problems, if only for a moment. You are experiencing a moment of transcendence, and engaging in an esthetic experience. Only, we might be separated by thousands of kilometers, yet our communication is not constrained by space, and we are most definitely separated by time, yet our communication does not take issue. We might never meet each other, yet it is my task here to make you understand my reasoning, and, with humility, I intend to undertake it. As a matter of fact, none of these are original thoughts, they have all been formulated long ago, and by better people than I. I have merely read or otherwise been exposed to them throughout my life, compiled them, made them coherent with my own world view, and now I restitute them to you, here.

Blogging

There was a time, not so distant, when newsletters felt like an artefact from an earlier era of the internet. Social media was here to stay, and there was little space left for anything else, really. Recommendation algorithms were supposed to provide exactly what users were looking for. Forms of content that were being recommended by humans, and based on human editing, seemed altogether obsolete. As it happens, the exact same could be said about blogs, but it is 2025 and here we are.

These forms of content are making a comeback, and for the same reasons they went away in the first place. Users are beginning to understand that the lack of follow-up after they have finished scrolling, and the set reading time, are a blessing in disguise. They have come to realise that infinite suggestions and never-ending feeds, that are so characteristic of social media, might not be bringing as much value as they once thought they did. Or maybe they are just starting to feel some form of digital fatigue, after a decade of overstimulation.

In this blog’s articles, as in newsletters, you will commit a set reading time to the medium, and you can afford not to come back to it until something else sparks your intesrest. That is in stark contrast to your favorite social media app, which you may very likely compulsively check for novelties several times a day. It is telling that there is a market for third-party apps to limit the amount of time spent on these apps. You are at no risk of having to implement that on this blog!

Themes

That is the single most frequent question I have been asked about this blog, from the moment I started talking about it.

I started journaling a year and a half ago, I wanted to try something new, though I was afraid of the commitement to make a new entry daily, or at least every so often. As it happens, there are few things that could be further away from my style of doing things. What I have found is that it serves no purpose to hold myself to general rules that were edicted by someone else, even when they are commonly accepted. In order to make the most out of my journaling experience, I have had to adapt the activity to my style, to journal whenever I felt like it, sometimes daily, sometimes few and far between. The same holds for themes, I did not want to stick to a particular theme in journaling, nor do I wish to do it here. I am a man of many interests, and making the thoughts and contents that I share here more streamlined and coherent is not reason enough to renounce any of them. That is just not me. Honesty is important to me, and I could not go on telling you about our intimate communication a few paragraphs above, and then conceal some major aspects of my personality. This blog will be a reflection of who I am, and everything ought to be more authentic that way. Though you are perfectly free to be only interested in some aspects of who I am, then tags are your friends.