essay5 November 20243 min read

From Private to Shared Knowledge

After years of keeping ideas in notebooks, I built a place to think in public, at my own pace, without the content treadmill.

Cre­at­ing my own web­site has been on my mind for a while. For years, I kept ideas scrib­bled in note­books wait­ing for that “per­fect mo­ment.” But, as the say­ing goes, “per­fect is the enemy of the good.” So here I am, even if it is far from per­fect (or even good — I am rusty).

A laptop with a dark screen sits on a wooden desk next to a white coffee cup and saucer, with a spiral notebook nearby. Natural light streams through sheer curtains in the background, creating a warm, productive workspace atmosphere
Mid­jour­ney got my usual screen­saver with­out a prompt, spooky.

For much of my ca­reer, I have been tin­ker­ing with tech­nol­o­gy in schools — build­ing tools that save cowork­ers time and help in­sti­tu­tions hold onto knowl­edge that would oth­er­wise walk out the door when staff leave. Until now, most of what I made stayed in­side what­ev­er school or team I was work­ing with. At some point I stopped being able to jus­ti­fy keep­ing it all to my­self.

I just want­ed a plat­form, a space I con­trol, where I can share open­ly. Now it’s here.

I do not be­lieve in the present day con­tent tread­mill to stay on top of an al­go­rithm. Call me old-fash­ioned, but I just want to take a slow and steady ap­proach to this site and my writ­ing. I grew up in the 90s watch­ing the in­ter­net re­shape every­thing it touched, and I still think tech­nol­o­gy does more good than harm on bal­ance. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that al­go­rithm tread­mill dom­i­nat­ing the web has been an evo­lu­tion I high­ly dis­like. I want this site to feel more like the old web — some­where I write and share at my own pace, with­out op­ti­miz­ing for any­thing ex­cept whether the writ­ing was worth the time it took.

An anime-style illustration showing a person sitting at a computer desk at night, viewed from behind. The scene is rendered in deep purples, blues, and reds. Through the window, there's a bright white moon or light source in a dark blue sky with silhouetted trees. The desk has a keyboard and appears to be a work or gaming setup. The overall mood is contemplative and atmospheric with its lo-fi aesthetic.

For now, I plan to write about what­ev­er holds my at­ten­tion — some­times that will be use­ful ma­te­r­i­al for ed­u­ca­tors, some­times it will be what­ev­er I have been think­ing about that week. If some of it ends up being use­ful to some­one else, even bet­ter.

The part of this I am still ex­cit­ed about is the pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty. Think­ing in pub­lic is one of the faster ways to find out where your rea­son­ing breaks. If any­one reads this and push­es back, that is the best pos­si­ble out­come — it means the writ­ing did enough to be worth dis­agree­ing with.

The hard­est part of get­ting here was my own per­fec­tion­ism. I kept stalling be­cause noth­ing felt fin­ished. Every draft had some­thing wrong with it, and “some­thing wrong” was enough to keep it in the draw­er. But noth­ing was going to im­prove sit­ting in a note­book. So I am writ­ing in the open in­stead — putting work out be­fore it feels ready, and see­ing what hap­pens when other peo­ple can ac­tu­al­ly re­spond to it.

I have no idea whether any­one will read this, and I think that might be the point.