This post is a wink at “Why a blog“ by Krayorn.

How I started writing

I won’t lie, the main reason I worked on a blog is that Krayorn harassed me about making one. He’s even been boasting about it here.

But let’s get back a little further than that. Two years ago, I had a rather philosophical debate (still with Krayorn) about positivity and negativity, and how to become more positive.

To put this in context, I’m a very fact-driven person, which is, I think, a great advantage in the tech world. Say you have made a feature for your app, you’ll need to think of all the cases that could go wrong to prevent them from happening. Well, I think I’m doing ok applying Murphy’s law.

The drawbacks of this are:

• I may become a downer for others: instead of hyping up a project, I’ll state everything that could go wrong.
• When presenting my own projects, I’ll want to start with everything I messed up rather than simply listing what I’ve accomplished, because I convince myself it’s better to be factual and truthful. Because of this alone, I’d make a terrible salesperson.
• Sometimes, it becomes an easy excuse to simply be negative on some subjects. “You see, there are way too many problems with this idea, so why bother?”

I wanted to keep my critical thinking while improving my communication skills, and hopefully become a more positive person. That’s a tough goal. Communication skills I can deal with, but becoming more positive felt like asking a depressive person to “just be happy”. I was reluctant about the possibility of it happening at all, but still wanted to try. After hours of discussion, we came to an agreement that I should try to keep a gratitude journal.

At some point during the holidays, I used the “journal” app on my phone, linked it to a picture I had just taken, and thought hard about nice things I could say about it. So on Thursday, 25 January 2024, my first post was:

That was no easy first step, but it was the start of something. I kept going and added some highlights from my days. At some point, I started writing more and more (full sentences, I swear) about anything that happened that day. I kept writing in my journal every day for about a year. After that, it became scarce, and I finally stopped writing in the journal app in October 2025.

You know that feeling when you open your fridge and ask yourself, “What was I fetching already?” That decreased greatly. It was a great memory exercise, and there were fewer “the heck did I do today?” moments.

Apart from that, I am still uncertain whether I became more positive afterwards. Maybe I struggle a little less to find good things that happened in a day now. And maybe that’s what being more positive is about, my core functioning hasn’t changed.

I stopped journaling in my phone app but kept writing on paper, logging my vacations, and writing holiday letters. At that time, the idea of starting a blog crept back into the back of my mind.

Why a blog

Writing will surely improve my English, which is a cool bonus. However, I’m proficient enough to navigate the corporate world at my current level, and I do not intend to become an author, so there’s no real objective here for me.

Half of the internet traffic is now bots, no doubt, this will only increase in the future. A growing number of websites will be AI-generated. I also like that I can add a drop of human content to an ocean of bots. But that’s not a fight I can have a big impact on.

So what are my motivations?

When I say I do 3D printing as a hobby, I’m always asked for details. This is not yet a widespread hobby, so I need to show examples. I’ll go through my phone and scroll through it, trying to find one to three examples. I ended up making a picture folder with a few examples. But that’s not enough because some people want to show their friends, and I haven’t put that on any social media. How convenient would it be if I had a link I could share with everything I’ve done?

Ok, we have a first motivator. But that’s a little light, let’s think harder.

When I reflect on my flaws, there’s one thing that strikes me: I’m not good at debating. Of course, talking a little louder would help, but that’s not how I want to communicate. To improve, I see two paths: Improve my improvisation skills or prepare the topics that matter to me.

Writing about a subject means you have to think hard about it, maybe search for more information to consolidate your thoughts. You should end up having clear, well-thought-out arguments that will have more impact in a debate than loud, imprecise claims.

That’s a second motivator that could have an impact on the few subjects I chose to write about. Considering I’ll write about what matters to me, this should be a great starting point.

I like the idea that this place on the internet is mine: No ads, no cookies, no pop-ups. Just me, my projects, and thoughts. I can put whatever I want on it, but more importantly, the content is mine. It doesn’t belong to any big corporation’s app that can be bought by any rich guy with a criminal record. This counts as a third motivator.

Let’s say I make a blog, except for 3D printing, what would I even talk about ? Well, in that case, I already had 10 ideas before getting started. I’m bad at falling asleep. It takes time, even if I spend the day out, eat correctly, sleep early, and so on… My mind wanders a lot, either summing up what happened that day or going on any random thought. These thoughts are pretty clear, I just didn’t put them to use by taking notes the next day. It’s time they stopped going to waste.

What now ?

Well, I’ve made it. I’ve published my blog already! There’s very little content yet, but I intend on posting more. Hopefully, link some of my projects to it soon.