The Year I Publish - My 2024 Theme
I’ve never been a fan of New Year’s resolutions. I’ve always found them to be a bit of a joke. I mean, how many people actually stick to them? I know I never have. You focus on them for a few days until you miss a day. Then you miss a week, then a month, and then you forget you ever had a resolution.
So this year, I’m going to try something different. Instead of focusing on a strict resolution, I will set a theme to focus on throughout the year. This year, my theme is to publish more.
Writing vs Publishing
In order to publish more, I need to write more.
I have a lot of drafts that I’ve started, but never finished. I have a lot of ideas that I’ve started, but never fleshed out. Lots of projects that never go live. I start a lot of fun projects and hobbies, but I never share them with the world.
I want to change that. I want to finish what I start. I want to publish my work.
What I Want to Publish
I want to publish more than just writing. I want to publish my art. I want to publish my code. I want to publish my thoughts. I want to publish my ideas. I want to publish my projects. I want to publish my hobbies.
I want to share what I create, regardless of whether it is tangible, theoretical, or thought-provoking.
Current Ideas for Publishing
- Personal Blog: What you are reading right now is my personal blog. I call it notes because it is a collection of my thoughts and ideas. They are just notes, not polished works of art. They are not meant to be perfect. They are things I am thinking about and want to share with the world, or even just have a record to remember it myself later.
- Art: I want to start sharing my art. I have started playing the guitar and I want to share my progress. I also want to start drawing again and share my progress. I may also share other forms of art that I create.
- Code: I want to start sharing my code. I work across a lot of interesting codebases and languages and can share a variety of different things I encounter. This knowledge can be useful to others or spark new ideas.
- Projects: I have a lot of projects that I start and never finish. I want to start sharing my projects, even if they are not finished. I want to share my progress and my ideas. I want to share what I am working on and what I am thinking about.
- Academic: I need to start publishing more academic work for my Masters and (hopefully 🤞) my PhD. There are a lot of innovative ideas to explore here that others can learn from and this work is monumental to my career.
- Substack: I want to start a newsletter. I have decided to call it CloudXP and it will share details about cloud computing and DevOps. I have a lot of interesting and fun areas to explore with it and will share more details later.
- YouTube: I used to run a YouTube channel focused on software engineering and it has ~60,000 subscribers. It has been years since i have published anything there and it would be fun to pick it up along with my Substack and do some new work there.
These are just some of the ideas. I may not finish all of them and there might be different ones that capture my interest as we proceed throughout the year.
This gets into why I call this my 2024 Theme, and not my 2024 Resolution. I want to focus on the theme of publishing more. I don’t want to hold myself to a strict resolution that I pass or fail and that forces me to endure when other opportunities have since gathered my attention. I can shift from different priorities or interests throughout the year and still be successful in my theme if I am publishing what I do.
It isn’t as much WHAT I publish that matters, as much as that I DO publish.
How I Will Publish
As mentioned above. Publishing doesn’t mean that I am signing a book deal or a record deal. In fact, that isn’t currently even a consideration right now. When I use the word “publish”, I mean that I am sharing my work with the world. It will be public and I will be accountable for its creation and it will have my name on it.
Currently, I expect to publish in the following ways:
- This blog
- Substack
- YouTube
- GitHub
- Academic Journals
- Social Media
I will also be looking for other ways to publish my work.
I wanted to call out one of the publications above: Social media. This might seem weird since everyone publishes on social media. Except that I really don’t. I have heard from friends and family that know one knows what I am up to because I never create posts on social media to share my efforts.
I actually really don’t enjoy social media that much. I find the posts to be too fake and forced. But I also realize that I am missing out on a lot of opportunities to share my work and to connect with others. Some people, particularly friends and family, really just want to know what is happening to me. I think this is one of the few redeeming qualities of social media, and therefore I am willing to entertain it. So I will publish more on social media. Although, coming from zero, this isn’t going to mean much. But I will publish there.
Mastodon and Twitter will be my primary intellectual platforms. Instagram will be more personal and artistic. LinkedIn will be professional and academic.
Cheers to 2024!
I am excited to start the year with this theme. It is something I have beat myself up about before, not finishing what I started and not sharing it with the world. I expect that however the year pans out, as long as I share more while doing it, that I can be proud of myself at the end.
I don’t know what 2024 will bring, but cheers to 2024, and cheers to publishing more. 🍻