Why I blog again

It's been a while since I've spent some time and energy on my website. The content was outdated. The overall structure and design no longer offered what I needed from a website.

A self portrait of mine from more artistic times. I am using a view camera, obscuring my head with a blanket, but with the camera aimed at the viewer through a mirror.

That has changed now as I've redone the whole thing. My main reason the redo it was wanting to have a blog again. For me, there are at least three great reasons to have a blog.

To share

In the past few years I've had the joy of learning a lot about accessibility. One of the things that I've always seen is that accessibility starts with awareness. It's hard to have accessibility in mind if you're not aware of what accessibility is. Once you are aware, you need the time and knowledge to do something with that awareness.

Now I'm not at liberty to give people time, but I can spread awareness, and I can share knowledge. And the best thing is, they're completely free and incredibly easy to share. So I'll be glad to share if it helps others. My experience is that it doesn't just help others. Whenever you share, there's always something that comes back from it.

Learn by building

Whenever I dive into learning something there are two possible motivators. It can be because I have a clear and practical goal I want to reach. I'll learn and use any technology that's needed to reach that goal. The other motivator is curiosity. When something grabs my attention and time permits, I can dive into the silliest of subjects.

A blog is a platform for both. I can have goals like: a WCAG 2.1 AAA compliant website with best practices for code and performance. At the same time it also gives me a good excuse to dive into details I usually won't encounter doing my day job. So far I've already learned about Webmentions, Microformats and how to order my CSS declarations.

Explaining clarifies

At the art academy we often talked about what we were doing. You talked to your teacher to explain what you were planning to do for an assignment. You talked to other students, asking each other what you're planning. Whenever you met other friends, family or whoever, you were always talking about your projects and plans. It could be that a project was stagnant for days or weeks. But each time I explained what I was doing, I understood more clearly what I was actually doing. Every time I talked, I had to think about what I was doing. About what the actual core thought or goal was. About how to communicate this to other people.

This process always improved whatever I was doing. It's kind of hard to explain, but by writing about it now, I can already explain it better. Whenever you consciously communicate about something, you have to re-evaluate what it is. Every re-evaluation is a chance for growth.

Onwards

The website is now ready (enough) for me to publish my thoughts on. I've got a big list of things I can still improve. Lots of topics I can dive into. The most important thing is that I have my platform now. Content will follow, if I'm not too hard on myself.

If you have any feedback on either the website or the content, please let me know. There is so much I can still learn, and I can't wait to find out.