Sym·poly·mathesy

by Chris Krycho

Volume

On my need to write, and writing here less lately. (Or: writing something because I needed to gain a sense of momentum about my writing goals, and writing about writing comes easily, which is why bloggers resort to it when they’re tired.)

Assumed audience: People who like reading writing about writing.

My writing here has always gone through ebbs and flows, but it has been particularly diminished for the past year or so, and the first half of this year does not look to be changing that one bit. There’s a good reason for that!

I have, as far as I can tell, a deep need to write. I have been writing in various ways basically since I learned how. When I was a kid, I liked writing papers, and I wrote fiction as well. When I discovered blogging via Xanga (!) as a freshman in college back in 2005, I had found my niche. I have been publishing on some variety of blog almost continuously since then. But where, a few years ago, I was commonly putting out 80,000 – 120,000 words on this site, the last couple years have seen much, much less published here.

The reason is: I am still writing, but much of that writing is in other venues. Some of it is forthcoming (as you will see in the next few months), but most of it is for work. Both in and for open source, with Ember.js RFCs topping 35,000 words in the last year — with a much higher bar than a blog post, at least as I do such things! — and also for internal documents, including the “Business Case for TypeScript” I authored in late 2020 and many more such items, I find: At the end of a day, I have often already done a great deal of writing, and when I add in a few more hours of parenting (which is always hard for any parent, but two years of various impacts from COVID’s effects have made it harder!), I simply have very little left on that front.

What energy for writing I do have is spent on the various talks and essays I am working on for other venues. (Again: more on that front soon.) Beyond that, my time is mostly spent on reading: reading books, reading essays I have saved to my read on my Kobo via Pocket, reading items in my RSS list, and so on.

This site will never be truly dormant, but if you’re curious about the shifts in frequency of posting, this is what’s up. And keep your eyes out for: two full talks being delivered this spring (one announced, one that I should be announcing within the next week or so), and a book review/essay being published elsewhere.1

Notes

  1. Yes, truly, finally, for real, it is actually happening! …but I have to finish writing it by next Monday, and I wrote this instead this morning because I need to just get something out, and I knew I did not have the mental energy to make progress on that essay. So: writing for not-work of some sort as a win. ↩︎