Writing time

After months of reflexion on whether or not to actually start writing my own blog, I’ve finally managed to take the time and set it up. Hurray!

I’m using Hugo, which I already used once or twice before for other static sites, and I enjoy its simplicity, though I still spent a lot of time tinkering with layouts and whatnot. I’m satisfied with the style for now, but it might evolve. It’s also the occasion to test a bit my infrastructure (on kubernetes no less, yay!).

And, if you want to, you can check out the repository over here.

As such, this blog is going to be the place where I dump some random thoughts on experiments, projects, life, hobbies, and even teach some stuff, if I manage to put my mind to it. I’m excited to start writing!

On “Getting started”

I would like to take on this post’s occasion to talk about this subject: “getting started”. As in, actually getting stuff done, pushing yourself forward.

I feel like I should introduce myself a bit first: I’m passionate about computers, and I consider myself enthusiastic, meaning I like pretty much everything. Of course, this derives pretty well into technology, because I like to tinker with different languages, libraries… which is also why I like the DevOps/SRE culture so much, because I can automate and program everything!

I’d also describe myself as a perfectionist, but I think this is both a quality and a shortcoming.

Obviously, this drives me to learn and better myself on several subjects or projects that I’m interested in, but this also means I could always find something wrong in anything I’m accomplishing, leaving me unsatisfied.

Over-engineering

As of now, this blog itself is a prime example of overengineering. This very blog, serving several static files and blog articles, is running on top of kubernetes, on a cluster of three machines, with logging, monitoring, replication, private docker registries, several libraries to generate its files… and that’s just the technical part.

Before even running this blog, I also wanted to perfectly figure out how the pages should look like, what exact information I would want to display, which links to redirect to, etc.

The main point is: I wouldn’t start this blog if I didn’t figure out ahead of time how I would do it; it being:

• the blog itself,
• the website that links to it,
• some article ideas that I could write in it,
• what infrastructure would run it.

It doesn’t sound that bad, but I sometimes find myself daydreaming about a fun little project that could probably be done in several hours work, and, while thinking about how to make it more scalable, more reliable, improving on features, I end up thinking: “damn, I can’t do this without having every single one of Google’s datacenters for redundancy, continuous integration, and – oh, let’s add 5 more features…

Of course, as you can see, I’ve actually managed to get it up and running. But not before I was satisfied for the most part with every point I just listed. I still think there is a lot left to do, though! And it was even due to some of my friends, telling me not to overthink, not to over-engineer everything.

Over-engineering is really one thing I need to overcome. I do think I’m pragmatic enough to know when I’m over-engineering, but it doesn’t go without frustration.

Procrastinating

On the other hand, what grinds my gears a bit is when I’m procrastinating. If I’m having trouble starting stuff, it’s mostly due to this.

I do value time for myself though. I think a good way to think about it is: either take time to have fun, or take time to improve yourself.

It also sometimes becomes very “meta”, because I’m torturing myself thinking “I shouldn’t take time thinking about this…” and end up doing nothing.

Spiraling out of control procrastinating and accomplishing nothing in your day is the worst feeling ever.

Seeing the big picture

I think the hardest part is establishing this discipline for yourself, and that sometimes, you must simply concentrate, focus, get in the zone and get stuff done.

I also believe that having a good lifestyle helps a lot with these issues. Eating correctly, exercising, taking time for work and time for yourself… It seems straightforward, but it really isn’t when you’re not in line with this.

On the matter of procrastinating, and getting started: starting small helps. I find that I can get very easily into the zone within minutes of actually starting working. Even doing a small chore in your house at least makes you think that you’ve accomplished something for the day! It also works for bigger projects. Start small, then iterate. This is really what it’s all about: starting.

So here I am, getting started.

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