Why a blog?

For over a year and half I have been happily blogging on Medium. I was quick to sign up when the platform first launched (and snag that elusive @seanmcp handle) but was slow to start writing.

Then, in the summer of 2017, I enrolled in the Iron Yard and was encouraged to blog my process. After looking at Blogger for a minute (seriously), I settled on Medium. I appreciated the design esthetic and attention to typographical detail. Composing was simple and I found code blocks quite useful.

I never really settled into a consistent writing schedule but did find some success writing about JavaScript and React. My most popular article, “How to use emojis in React”, continues to receive “applause” six months after I published.

All that is to say, Medium was a perfectly suitable platform for what I needed. And it still is a good platform, but my needs have changed.

Recent criticism of Medium aside, ownership of my content was the biggest catalyst for looking elsewhere. Medium is popular now, but will it be in two years? Five years? Ten years? Will we be reading Medium posts about terraforming when we colonize the moon? Or will Medium’s popularity wane and be shuttered before we get there? No one can know.

Regardless of the future of the platform, I’d like my content to live on. My goal is to help people (help people), so my words—as feeble as they are—need to persist long enough to do that.

“The grass withers and the flowers fade”; nothing is permanent in this life. But having more direct ownership and control of my content puts me in a better position to continue helping people for the long-run.

That’s why I’m starting this blog. For the immediate future, I will be cross-posting everything I write on Medium and linking back here. After then? We’ll see what the web looks like.

In the meantime, thank you for stopping by. Check back weekly or subscribe with your favorite RSS reader.