I decided to start a blog. It happens to be New Year’s Day, but this isn’t part of any resolution; I just sort of decided I want to get better at writing. As a developer, of course I started backwards — figure out where and how to publish, and worry about the writing later. Well, step one is done, now it’s time for some words.

My intended audience for this is primarily myself. I suppose my wife, family, and friends will read a few posts here and there. With any luck, in about 20 years maybe my kids will be interested in what I have to say today.

I’m going to start simple and treat this as an actual “blog” - a web log. I’ve got a few ideas about what that might include.

Video games

Gaming is my preferred form of media, relaxation, etc. After I finish a game, I’ll write about it. Not quite a review, but I’ll probably mention the things I liked and disliked. For the past few years I’ve kept a list of each game I played. Now I’ve got a place to add some thoughts about each one. I’m really excited to log my games, but it might not happen very often; with two young children (and a preference for long games), I don’t finish as many games as I’d like each year.

Travel

I got to travel a lot with my family when I was younger, so it’s a normal part of my life, and something I always look forward to. Just like with gaming, whenever I take a trip, I’ll write about it. Just like with gaming, two young children means I don’t travel as much as I’d like. But I think it will be really nice to have some actual written thoughts along with all the memories. I’m sure I’ll write a bit about the destination, but I’m also interested in capturing the technical details as well. In the past few years I’ve become mildly (my wife might say otherwise) obsessed with travel gear, including clothing. I’ll talk about specific pieces in each travel log, but I might write about the gear at other times too.

Rock climbing

I started climbing about a year and a half ago. I got hooked immediately. I go to the gym two or three times a week, and outdoors a handful of times each month (depending on the season). That seems like the perfect thing to log. But this feels like the opposite problem of travel and gaming — too much data. I’m sure I’ll have to mess with the format a bit, but I’ll probably start by posting a digest of sorts. Maybe weekly, monthly? It’s too much to log each route at the gym, but I’m interested in tracking my progress by difficulty, and likely whatever training (if any) I’m doing at the time. Outdoor climbing will be much easier to track — all the routes are named and, so far at least, there hasn’t been a huge volume.

There might be a few random posts here and there, but I’ll focus on those above topics until I get a better feel for my writing. Maybe one day I’ll write about some things that have a bit more broad appeal. In the next few weeks I’ll write a few posts about my baseline for each of those areas, and then we’ll see where this thing takes me.