Hello World

I very well may have written Hello World hundreds of times over the course of my life at this point, which I'm sure is true of anybody who dedicates as many hours of their waking life to making computers do what you want them to.

There are few things as comforting as the certainty that you've been given permission to be wholly unoriginal when it comes to beginnings. Safe in the knowledge that there's no expectation your first steps be anything more than a simple acknowledgement of your having brought something to life. This is an idea that has ingrained itself so deeply in my trade that it has ascended to ritualistic status. I'm not being uncreative, see, I'm partaking in a ritual that has been around for at least 50 years.

I can't even find it in me to be glibly cynical about it, if I'm being honest. That sentiment is distasteful to me, partially because of the insincerity, but mostly because cynicism in itself is already a taxing enough enterprise, adding ironic mockery to it seems to me an unnecessarily precarious endeavor. You can be cute, or you can be understood, and I don't see myself as particularly aligned with the pursuit of admiration for my ability to not care.

It is a ritual. It is meaningful. I do feel good about participating in it. Why wouldn't I? Robbing myself of what little sense of community and belonging I can find amongst those that care about the things I do leaves nobody empty-handed but myself. I'm certain 8-year-old me would have agreed: Computers are exciting, magical things, and I'm lucky to get to work with them for a living. Every time you give life to something is a special moment that should be marked by a recognizable script. I can agree with that as much as I can agree with having cake on your birthday, at least.

Also, I don't owe any of you anything. There's a reason I went out of my way to set up shop here in the wilderness, as far away as I possibly could from the mainstream internet, making sure to build everything myself. I do not want to be beholden to anyone except my hosting provider. This is a feeling of freedom that has been thoroughly forgotten by the internet denizens of today, and I intend to relish in my ability to enjoy that freedom. It starts with something as simple as choosing to shed any mask of what I think is or is not meaningful, and ends with my name on a watchlist.

So, to tie up this latest Hello World of mine, if you come here expecting consistency, nuance, or informed takes, I'd suggest you either leave, or accept that allowing someone to be human is to allow them to write the way we speak when we are in good company: Passionately, imaginatively, ill-informed, and unbothered. Lord knows we could use more unmistakably human spaces these days.