Unexpected beauty of shameless self-promotion

Introduction

Hello, dear reader. Thank you for rendering this page on your web browser and investing time to read this blog post attempt with a clickbaity title in the omnipresent ocean of SEO-optimized AI-generated text. But don’t worry, you are safe here. The only AI used here was a Grammarly proofreader, as my English grammar can be flaky sometimes.

I started thinking about creating a blog a decade ago. As any intellectually inclined teenager, I was young and believed I was smart enough to provide some actual value to the world; my thoughts were unique and special, and the world wide web eagerly awaited me to share them. However, having enough self-awareness, I recognized that this was coming from the need to be validated and heard, which is typical for a teenager. Nothing wrong with that, but luckily, I never started blogging.

Why?

So, what the hell am I doing now? Writing a blog post, obviously. But why?

I was asking myself this many times, and there are several reasons I came up with:

1. Remembrance

As I’m probably not the best user of social networks in the world (which might sound counterintuitive if you see all those social links on the main page), I have lost many valuable digital things over the years. Photos, videos, old pet projects, 40 Bitcoins, etc., but most importantly, memories. While talking to a friend who keeps all her pictures on Instagram as a lifetime photo album, I realized my virtual album is quite empty. I never used social media intensely; even when I did, it bored me quickly. Now, I want to leave some digital footprint so I can come back later and track my progress or remember who I was while writing this.

2. Refueling the passion for computers

After two decades of being in love with computation, I have gathered some knowledge and experience that someone might consider helpful. But I noticed the love itself slowly started fading away, and building software became only a (pretty stressful) job. This is my attempt to light that fire again by sharing what I do and what floats my boat - finding a passion that pushed me to code for days without sleep, social interactions, and, most importantly, worries of adulthood (and regular showers, yuck).

3. Fun

I’m not going to lie; this is fun. Since I was first introduced to blogging and “building in public” concepts, I have always found them immensely amusing. IMHO, documenting the journey of building something, with all the nitty-gritty details, all ups, and all downs, is more beneficial for readers than just observing the finished product.

4. Finally, self-promotion and connecting with the engineering community

In the end, I would like to connect more with the engineering community, and one of the best ways to achieve this is by putting unfiltered oneself out there, open for judgment. So, here I am, smoking, coding, and promoting myself and my work with no shame (maybe just a little bit). If you’d like to connect, you know where to find me.

Outro

Thank you for your attention if you have come this far, dear reader. Attention is expensive these days, I know.

P. S. The Internet says the blog post should be from 1500 to 2500 words to be SEO friendly, but honestly, I could not care less.