By writing this blog post, I’m doing the very thing that I state I no longer really do…

I started this blog in 2004. Back then, sharing my thoughts with the world–or, realistically, the handful of people who actually read my blog–was a new and exciting idea. But you can see that I have rarely added new posts in recent years, and when I did, it was mostly photos I’d taken. I haven’t added many deep or shallow thoughts about the world in a long time.

The online world has changed in 20 years. We now have lots of places where we can share our thoughts with the world, and sharing your every thought, meal or other experience on social media is now the norm for a lot of people. But I’m not much of a social media user, and that change is only one small reason why I’ve not blogged much in a long time.

When I started this blog, I cared very much about my professional persona and for several years I also maintained a professional blog about software testing. I hoped that these two blogs presented a certain profile of me as a professional in my field.  And if I’m honest with myself, I also cared about my overall public persona–that anyone who found my blogs, not just people in my professional sphere, would take away a certain impression of me. It’s not that I don’t care about my professional persona any longer; maintaining that image was a burden that I tired of over time, and I would hope that my work speaks for itself more now.

But here’s the biggest reason: one piece of wisdom that has become very important to over time is: in general, people just don’t think about you as much as you think they do. I’ve found this realization incredibly liberating, and I think it’s a large part of the mythos of people running out of fucks to give as they age. To reiterate what I stated above, certain people care very much about my thoughts on specific subjects, but overall, I just don’t think that my general thoughts on the world are that interesting–if anyone is even reading this blog.

Recently, I considered taking down this blog, but I enjoy reading my old posts from time to time. And I also think that it offers some interesting insights into my psyche–again, not necessarily the thoughts themselves, but at least the subjects that I chose to express my thoughts about. Again, that assumes that anyone is reading the blog. And if not, then leaving it up doesn’t matter one way or the other. But I don’t expect to be posting anything different than the past few years.