The Purpose of All This

I’ve always felt weird about blogs.

That’s got to be surprising, right? I mean, I’m currently writing a blog post of my own free will and volition, even if it’s about how weird blogging is for me. So if you’re confused, don’t worry about it, you’re in good company.

Part of why I’m doing this, though, is because I know it’ll help me in the long run. I get to post about my progress on projects, brag about accomplishments, and overall keep track of my wild trains of thought (trust me, there are several). And maybe keeping up a blog will force– I mean, encourage me to keep up with any projects I’m currently working on. Because sometimes I’ll just… forget to work on a project. Or I’ll get so busy with work that I won’t feel like I have time to work on anything personal, and I’ll then sit on the couch doomscrolling on reddit or diving into a rabbit hole about creating a 8-bit computer from scratch. I’ll literally procrastinate projects by watching videos about things I could do as a project. Which is weird, because that on its own is taking up time that I could have used to actuall do projects… Like I said, confusing. Anyways, maybe if I feel like I need to write about the stuff I’m doing, I’ll actually do it.

That assumes I’ll keep up with the blog posts, of course. I’m kind of really bad at that. I haven’t ever been able to keep a journal going for more than a couple of weeks. My dad used to do it before cancer killed him (You should read some of his posts, he was an incredible writer), and I have no idea how he did it. That man was a stirling example of sheer will. I’m biased, of course, but just about anyone who knew him would agree with me. He did what he wanted, and nothing would get in his way. Not even cancer. Well, until the end part, I guess. (Can you tell that black humor is how I cope with trauma?)

I thought that maybe when I finished school, I would have more time to work on stuff I wanted to work on. If anything, work has made it worse. I’m usually so tired that when I get home, I don’t want to do anything else. But actually doing things is how I get good at what I want to do. And I still want to do these things, I just need to push through the exhaustion. I love this stuff. I feel so good about it when I actually manage to do it. It’s such a dopamine rush when I finally get past a roadblock or finish a chunk of a project, and I’m proud of what I’ve done once I’ve finished.

And I know this because I’ve finally started to actually work on my projects! So I’m writing all of this down in the hopes that it will let me look back on what I’ve done and remember that, yeah, I’ve done cool stuff, and yeah, I can do more cool stuff. It might help me keep from running out of steam. Plus, I have a terrible memory for the important stuff. I’ll remember that WWII caused the birth of anime, but I won’t remember my own age (that actually happened once). Maybe writing this all down will actually help me remember that I’ve done something specific in the first place, or lay out the random projects I want to do in the future. Plus, every once in a while I do weird stuff during projects that might not be within the bounds of the the typical use-cases of the technologies I’m using. Writing down my process might help someone out down the road who also wants to do weird stuff with their projects, too.

I’m hoping this blog will be focused on the technical stuff. But in my first post I just wanted to lay out (to myself and others) why I’m doing this, and why it’s important to me. And here’s the thing: What I’m doing might not be important or interesting to anyone else. Maybe nobody but me will ever read any of this. I’m not delusional enough to think I’m the main character of this world. But at least I’m doing something. I’m not doomscrolling. I’m not stressing on how the world might be on fire. I’m having fun. I’m working on things that are interesting to me.

And in the end, isn’t that what’s really important?

– Cooper

I’m going to try to write a Hello World Program in a different language for each post. For “easy” languages, I’ll make it unnecessarily complicated. This week will be python, my favorite language.

def printPhrase(phrase):
    for chr in phrase:
        print(chr, end='')
    print()

def main():
    printPhrase("Hello World!")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()