So I got to thinking about what my next job might be today. I’m a software Developer, and to borrow Neal Stephenson’s terms, I seem to be more of a honer than a forger. I haven’t developed too many new apps of substance, but (whether through talent or career laziness), I seem to have become very good at troubleshooting and fixing bugs. This seems to be an unglamorous job among software developers, and something they try to quickly get promoted out of, but maybe, I thought, I can turn a weakness into a strength
So my mind turned to blogging in general, and WordPress in particular. I have gotten a lot of value from blogs and blogging over the years. I’ve met friends. Some of those friends have met each other. There are humans who wouldn’t have been born except for this. I know they exist: I have played video games with them. For a while, LiveJournal was my primary social environment. (I tend to think of LJ as less blogging and more of a social network, but that’s splitting hairs.) Blogs have given me a constant stream of data flowing through my optic nerves. They are a vital part of the human hive mind.
There are a few nice things about WordPress. It’s the predominant blogging platform, but the other features I like are not unique. It’s open source, and people can host it on their own servers or shared hosting accounts. This decentralization is important for reasons I’m too tired to articulate at the moment
So how can I make this world more awesome? For one thing, I should be blogging more. There’s an intersection between philosophy, fantasy, and real life that blogging is just perfect to explore. Intersection? There are whole worlds.
But as a programmer, I should be able to make a contribution to the tools used for blogging, and make a living in the process. But the nature of that contribution is a bit of a question mark. Is there bug fixing that is desperately needed? Plugins? Updates for the new(ish) mobile world? I don’t know what the mobile blogging experience is like; I know there are WordPress plugins for mobile, but I also know that the current mobile experience of most blogs sucks. Or maybe the technology has already matured and the ship has sailed. Anyway, I think my blog posts like questions better than answers, so I’ll end it here.
