Hello World: Starting My Writing Journey

September 4, 2025 • 3 min read

Welcome to my essays section! As the world keeps evolving to prioritize instant dopamine and maximum entertainment, I wanted a place to push back and record longer-form content about things that are important to me and that I find interesting.

Why Start Writing?

Recently I was listening to the Deep Questions podcast by Cal Newport. He said something about how reading is fantastic for you, but you only get about 50% of the benefit if you don’t also write.
I’ve always been someone who learns by doing, but I’m realizing that writing about what I’ve done adds another layer of understanding. It forces me to think about the why behind my decisions, not just the how.
It’s also a great way to organize my thoughts. I tend to listen to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of interesting books, but when asked to explain what I’ve learned I often have a hard time vocalizing it.

My plan is to write about:

• System Design & Architecture: Lessons learned from building scalable backend systems
• Technology Deep Dives: Exploring new tools, frameworks, and approaches
• Problem Solving: Real-world challenges and how I approached them
• Career Growth: Insights about growing as a software engineer
• Industry Trends: Thoughts on where technology is heading
• Sports: Observations from a casual fan
• Personal Finance: Opinions on navigating money and financial decisions
• Self-Improvement: Processes and theories on how to be better at life

The goal isn’t to create perfectly polished tutorials (there are plenty of those already), but rather to share authentic experiences and the messy reality of software development and life.

A Note on AI

I generally believe in using a healthy dose of AI. Perhaps I’ll write more about this later, but I see AI as a tool we need to embrace in order to keep up with the rapidly evolving nature of the industry.
I’d be a hypocrite to say that I don’t like AI - I used it to help create this very site. However, for my writing I plan to resist relying on AI, and I’ll make sure the words themselves are my own.
I may use AI for research or to help with grammar, but the actual tone and ideas will come from me. As a result, these essays may not be as polished as they otherwise could be, but I think there’s immense value in reading and writing content that hasn’t been fully shaped by AI.