Why I write

These days the number of pages on the internet is nearly infinite.

Going online searching for something almost exclusively leads to one or several blog posts where self proclaimed experts claim to have the solution to all your problems (and everyone else's too).

Whatever the topic, you can stake your life on there being a blog post on it.

So why do I think it's a good idea to add to this by blogging myself? And what on earth makes me think anyone would be interested in what I write?

The love of writing

This is my main motivation. Writing for the sake of writing.

Ever since I was a kid I've loved telling stories. In elementary school, I loved assignments where we had to make up stories. While some of my fact based essays, the free form writing was always original works. My favorite test in high school were those which always ended with writing a small essay about a certain topic. I simply loved this mix of facts and creative writing.

But as I got older I allowed myself to lose this part of me to work, parties and other activities related to young adulthood. I kept making up stories in my head, but I never put them down on paper and I really miss the act of putting words to a page.

When I started to make a career as an Android Developer, I wrote a talk and published a blogpost, but never really committed to the work.

This is something that I want to change.

This is something that I will change.

The Public Prophets

So why not just keep my writing in a private notebook? Well, I do that too, but why publish my work on the web for anyone to see and critique it?

I have a handful of prophets in my life. Each is a prophet in a specific topic and I turn to them at different times for different reasons. However, they all have one thing in common; They all publish their thoughts publicly for everyone to see. I want to be more like my prophets.

Doing things publicly, committing and pushing myself to take risks (albeit small ones), will make me grow. And if it's something I'm into more than writing it's personal growth! Just publishing one thing will force me to push through my fears about people not liking my work, and not publishing my writing would mean that I don't get any feedback on it, and without external feedback my growth will be limited.

Collecting my work

This website started out as a way for me to carve out my own personal corner of the internet. A place where I can collect all my work. Showcase my greatest hits, if you will. With the advent of platforms such as Medium and Twitter, owning your work has almost become a lost art.

This is also my main motivation for not choosing one of the popular blogging platforms out there, but rather build it myself. One day I might write about the technology choices I've made here, but for now I'll settle for mentioning that I'm using Gatsbyjs and Markdown, hosted on Netlify.

Closing thoughts

So what should you, the reader, expect from this blog? First, expect a wide range of topics. Though my body and soul is getting older, I am still a young writer.

Mostly I suspect I will stick to wrinting about topics related to tech in some shape or form. Having been working in startups since 2012, building companies since 2016 and startup investing since 2019 my mind tends to go off on tangents around these topics. My ambition is to capture these thoughts in a well edited format.

I might also sneak in a post or two about my newfound obsession with fountain pens. No promises though!

If you've made it this far, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my work. I would also love to hear what you thought about it! Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or send me an email (firstname [at] this domain).

Until next time!

/Viktor