With changes at work and less energy to write here, I wanted to at least write a general update. This usually helps me to “get back in the groove” blogging-wise.

At work, we’re going through a merger of sorts. It’s been in the works for quite some time, but it finally took effect at the start of this month. Because our workflows and scheduling system have changed, I find myself a bit out of sync with my routines. One of the things that came about is our technical documentation: our work wiki and knowledge base, specifically.

As an Emacs org-mode user, I’ve been working on my knowledge base for years. Some of our current workflows started with this personal knowledge base on my office computer’s Emacs, or at least passed through it in some form.

Perhaps I have some talent for writing workflows (I would assume so, since I keep being tagged to do them), but it’s Emacs (and org-mode) that brings it to light. It’s not just about writing information down. Understanding Emacs and building my own wiki in org-mode gave me the confidence to tackle bigger projects on my own, from writing simple bash scripts to troubleshooting my network connectivity last weekend1 (it’s working now, thanks to speskk).

The interest in writing technical documentation brought to mind mind my college days, when I was taking technical writing classes. Funny how sometimes the past catches up with you, especially when you think you’re done with it.

Meanwhile, I feel my writing energy for the blog has diminished a little. Not because I don’t want to write: the impulse to do so persists as it has been for the last 20 years. There’s just a lot going on, and I feel like I can’t break it down into chunks I can express in writing, at least not yet.

Almost at the same time, another part of my past seems to be making a comeback. This one is personal and uncertain, hopefully positive. The collision of the two - professional and personal - made last weekend quite thought-intensive.

Footnotes

1: The mastodon.technology instance was a tech-focused Mastodon server that shut down in 2023. This URL is broken now, but I’m leaving it in case it lives on in some archive.