Part of my personal problems with blogging lie with you, the reader.

I just don’t know who you are. Every time I write something, I am making a guess about you – that you care about Ruby, Emacs, education, etc. The truth is, though, that much of this may not be true about any of you, and certainly isn’t true about all of you. And, when I publish something on another topic, I know that this won’t be true of many of the readers that I wrote for with a previous post.

This is a problem for me. When I write, I try to think about the reader. This effects my topic choice, my style, and the depth that I attempt to cover the information.

I also notice this on a number of other blogs. Lots of developers who write create mixed content. And, I personally find some of the content interesting and some irrelevant. If you look at the advice on websites like ProBlogger, etc, you see that “the goal” of a blogger is to discover a niche and write for it.

I’m an eclectic person, and no single niche could hold my interest. It’s just not possible. And, I don’t think it is worth it, even if it was. Why give up on the variety of things that life has just to specialize in a single area?

So, I’m going to try something different. This blog is going to be my personal blog. It’ll have content that is personally important and interesting to me, as well as “air out” thoughts and impressions. I’m not going to try to stick to any single topic, because this hasn’t worked for me so far. My “measuring stick” will consist of whatever topic is interesting to me. Eventually I hope to build topics into separate, audience-specific blogs, as I find enough reader interest in them, and have enough personal interest to continue creating content.

Emacs is probably my primary passion at the moment. Emacs has its warts, but most of these are going away, and at a rapid, awesome pace. Emacs is no longer just a text editor. It is quickly moving to become a compelling lisp environment for general development. This will probably be the first separate blog I create.

I have a lot of interest in Ruby, too. Ruby rests at an intersection between many different programming traditions, has developed its own vibrant tradition, and is a very viable language to get paid to use.

Ultimately, my programming passions reside in what I would term “Advanced Programming”. I am interested in different programming techniques. I think there are some deep truths about thought, reality, and nature to be found. Ultimately, I think understanding these things will provide answers to open the open questions about programming.

Of course, life is full of interesting things that have nothing to do with programming – things such as philosophy, literature, music, and mathematics. I will probably will end up writing about these topics mostly on this blog, since they are personal, interesting, and I don’t really think they apply to any specific group of people, besides the generic catchall “geeky people who love learning”.

I think these topics may end up developing into a sort of “independent scholar” blog. There are many people who are interested in learning, but have no affiliation with any academic institution. Many people are dissatisfied with higher education. I, personally, am glad to be away from it. There are some things that I really liked about college. The academic world isn’t was worth it, though. It costs too much in time, stress, and money.

I feel better, like a number of questions that I have been wondering about are resolved. Thanks for reading.

Joel