This site is a collection of essays written by me, for me. You’re welcome to read along.
- I write to think things through.
- I write to work ideas out properly.
- I write to explore intersections that interest me and see what happens when you put certain things next to each other.
- Sometimes this includes personal memories or anecdotes that may or may not have relevance today.
There is a little performance in here, and a little persuasion, but not much. Mostly, this is about doing the thinking and then putting the thinking somewhere stable so I don’t have to keep it all in my head. You know, like the Zen story, “have a cup of tea, have another one”.
Think of it less like a blog and more like:
- a public essay collection
- a set of worked-through thoughts
- messages put in bottles and pushed out to sea
If something resonates with you, great.
If it doesn’t, that’s fine too.
What This Site Is Not
This is not:
- a community space
- a discussion forum
- a content funnel
- a brand
- a performance for engagement
I am not trying to build an audience in the social-media sense.
Most people read without commenting. That is pretty normal here and so expected.
About Engagement
You do not need to:
- comment
- agree with me
- tell me you liked something
Using the ideas is the point.
Many of the essays are written to:
- explain mechanisms/systems properly
- do due diligence on an idea (or design)
- test whether something actually holds together
- simply record something I’ve worked out and don’t want to lose
- or to share something I thought/felt/experienced
Some pieces are intended to provoke thought, debate, or action… but not necessarily a conversation with me.
They are there to make you think, not to create a back-and-forth.
If You Do Want To Engage
Thoughtful questions or follow-on thinking are welcome.
What I’m interested in is:
- people building on an idea
- people testing it
- people saying “I tried this and here’s what happened”
What I’m not especially interested in:
- praise without substance
- agreement or disagreement without reasoning
- vibes-based reactions
Posting Cadence
I post frequently, but irregularly.
Sometimes that means:
- one or two pieces close together
- sometimes a run of very deep technical articles
- sometimes something completely different
There is no schedule to follow.
If You Feel Compelled To Say “Hi”
If you really do want to say hello, the least-worst place to do that is LinkedIn Messenger.
I’m not especially good at sustained correspondence, and I don’t always reply quickly (or at all), but that’s the channel I check most reliably.
One thing worth saying up front: writing creates a version of a person that isn’t quite real. Essays compress thinking into something more coherent than day-to-day human interaction ever is.
So if you do reach out, bear in mind that whoever you think I am from the writing is probably not who you’ll meet in practice. I’m just an Anglo-Irish bloke from the Midlands, and generally quite Brummie about things.
No obligation to get in touch at all… reading quietly is the normal mode here.
Final Note
If you find something here useful, feel free to take it and move on.
You don’t owe me interaction.
I don’t expect ongoing engagement.
This site exists because writing is how I think and I enjoy it… everything else is incidental.
Remember: This is a thinking space, not a performance space. Read accordingly.
Noise follows performance.
Silence follows truth.