Advent of Writing: 24 days of posts

I’m doing an experiment this year. Advent of Code is a fun challenge that a lot of people do, but the last thing I want to do after a days work is more problem solving. Instead of giving up advent entirely, I’ve been thinking about what I actually want to do daily instead.

Every day I do a lot of research into things. It could be anything: dishwashers (we are renovating our kitchen), history of post and beam construction, how carburetors work, color theory, etc. Over the last year I’ve been keeping a daily journal to write my thoughts down and it’s been wonderful.

However, I’ve been failing at publicly writing over the last couple years. It’s a shame because there’s something magical about sharing information. It forces me to be more concrete and sparks discussion.

So, this year I’m doing an advent of writing. Here are the rules:

• Starting December 1, I’ll write down a quick post about whatever I learned or thought about that day
• I’ll do this up until December 25 for a total of 24 posts
• Posts will start with the prompt “On the Nth day, I ________ about ________.”
• Posts can be literally anything, from programming and design to how I choose clothes. Anything that catches my attention that day. It won’t follow a topic linearly, but there will likely be common themes as I have a few steady projects going on. It’ll be a raw reflection of who I am which is kinda scary.

This will be fun. I hope it gets me back into the habit of writing. I suspect it’ll kickstart some work I’ve been meaning to do (like Actual) because I’ll have a public space to mark achievements.

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