Why I Have Started Blogging

Sunday. January 07, 2018 - 1 min

I have been keeping notes of things that I enjoy doing for quite some time now in my wiki. My motivation stemmed primarily from the fact that I’m far from being described as a person with photographic memory xD

Since I started, circa 2009, content in my wiki has proliferated. The medium was quick to access and use for editing but most importantly notes where easily retrievable when needed. This habit of systematic note taking has helped me a lot along the way and I consider it as one of my life hacks that keeps me sane and productive in my professional endeavours and hobbies. Linux commands, common utility configurations, interview run-books and question banks where some of the things I have relentlessly documented to came back again and again to read up, remember, reference or update.

Even though personal wikis are a great way for documenting things they end up feeling too personalized and they are hardly useful to others. Why? I believe they lack a couple of important elements: context and a story. You write down a fancy Linux one-liner but you don’t necessarily explain why this is a useful command and what are the real-world use cases that will save you tons of time. This kind of content can never be exciting enough for others to read. Also writing down a story with context helps the author test her/his assumptions, make things more clear, focus and validate the information shared.

Thus, as part of my New Year’s Resolution I’m going to start blogging about some of the things that I document. I don’t intend to stop wikifying. On the contrary, I will do it more rigorously with the help of the stories and contexts of my blog posts. My expectations from activity are long-term but are great and diverse: i) become a better writer, ii) ease access to whatever special knowledge I may have, and iii) be able to tell a bigger story about myself as a professional.

Hope you enjoy it!
–β

Vassilis Moustakas

Informatics engineer, retired (?) basketball player, wannabe guitar hero, sober vine-philosopher :)