Back in military service, I always kept a small notebook and a pen tucked into the pocket on my chest. Getting out of our base every morning, I patted my left chest to make sure it was there. Throughout two years of my service, I would pull out the note and jot down ideas and important notes. The habit became second nature since we are not allowed to have an electronic device in the base, but I sometimes miss those days.

You might be like "you can still carry a note around, dumbass", and I still do but it doesn't work well. After a few years of work in tech field, especially in super fast paced startup companies, it trained me instantly respond to a slack message rather than pulling up a piece of paper and writing, and tapping down my trackpad and scavenge last meeting note in notion rather than flipping note pages back and forth.

I am not saying I miss paper copies, and I do not believe that handwritten text is always superior to digital, keyboard-written text. What I miss is the power of my heart.

Writing is thinking

Looking back past a few years, I think I turned into a very passive learner. No, it will be more accurate to say, a passive reader. I am almost convinced myself that I've used up all my energy in keeping track of exponentially shifting tech industry, which was not true. 30 second skimming through bunch of medium articles and then swiping left email newsletter to archive are not reading. I stopped thinking. I let it sink me.

Heavy usage of AI tools, including GPT, Copilot, Cursor, and many others out there, worsened it. Prompting AI agents to do some tasks is not same as writing. They probabilistically pretend to understand what you say (even if you put it bad) and deliver the most probable and desirable based on the context. It is convenient but I feel like it kills a part of my brain. I found myself just passively adapting to the change, without any thoughts or opinions.

To my friends and collegues, I say that I want to work as a software engineer more than 40 years. This article of Paul Graham, however, struct me so hard. As he says, all pressure to write has gone. In other words, and I genuinely believe, the need for thinking is ebbing away. In order for me to survive in this field, I need to write. I need to think what I am thinking.

What I want it to be

I want my new blog to be like

• my own words, my own opinion: this is basically all I (or we) need.
• not fancy, but persistent: I really enjoy those blogs that are from early 2000s. They look not that fancy in the eyes of modern web developers, but they are full of insights. That's what I want for visitors of mine to feel. On the other hand, a lot of blogs these days turned into an appendix of their resume or portfolios. I need to make writing and posting more approachable.
• easy and short writing: learning from past mistakes, I started a lot of writings but couldn't finish it.

What I want it not to be

I want my new blog not to be like:

• Corny (and likely inaccurate) prediction about the future: I am bad at this, and hate when people do.
• TIL note: I want it to be a place for my opinion and personal essay, not a note archive.

Anyways, I am renewing my blog. Hope this effort worth it.