Hello world.

I've wanted to write for a while now. A long time actually.

But i've hesitated for many reasons.

Mostly, I have been worried that I have nothing particularly insightful to say.

I've read many blogs written by people that are wonderfully articulate, wickedly smart, or wildly interesting, sometimes all at once. In comparison I consider myself none of these things. Although some people might disagree (thanks mum!), words have always felt unfamiliar to me.

I prefer music without lyrics, and almost never listen to the words if they're present. [1] My favourite part of English in school was grammar. [2] And the rest was a struggle. Poetry was the worst – I couldn't understand why people didn't just say what they meant – and why I was being forced to try and unravel the output of their twisted and psychotic ramblings ('In Xanadu, did Kubla Kahn'...oh ffs!).

Of course with age and (some) maturity, I've grown to appreciate these things. But there's a big difference between appreciating other people's writing and presenting the world with the thoughts bouncing around inside of my head.

So why write?

Well, the truth is that many of the people I admire greatly write (Paul Graham, Derek Sievers, Charlie Munger). I admire them for their clarity of thought, and many of them attribute a great deal of this to the process of writing.

Apparently it helps you to figure out what you're thinking. We'll have to see about that.

The stakes are also quite low. It's almost guaranteed that this blog won't be read by more than a handful of people. And for those that already know me, I surmise that they have opted to stay in my life thus far, meaning that their impression of me is at least neutral to slightly favourable.

Lastly, I have a little boy now. And I often think about all the things i'd like to tell him about, the conversations I hope we get to have, and forgive the self-indulgence, the lessons i'd like to impart. Like how to shave, or deal with disappointment and fear, or fight off our robot AI overlords (that one we might have to figure out together).

Being a hypochondriac doesn't help. And spending my days looking at the ways in which diseases wreck the human body definitely doesn't help.

So faced with the constant reminder of the finitude of our lives, I think the balance has finally tipped to overcome the inertia keeping me from putting my thoughts out there.

I don't know what I'll write about yet. I have a few topics in mind and things i'd like to explore, but for now the goal is just to hit publish.

So with that, to Xanadu [3] we go...

[1] I remember my first girlfriend once remarked that I always disliked songs for "interesting" reasons. It was almost always a grammatical error, or incorrect conjugation of a verb.

[2] For anyone that does read this, I have forgotten most of the rules of English grammar by now and may in fact break them (Easter eggs). If you spot an error in my post, feel free to hit me with a "Gotcha".

[3] I still have no idea what this poem is about.