Introduction
Over the past 9 months I managed to publish only 4 blog posts. Working backwards from the observed facts, the cause was that I was trying to bind the blog to a topic. So I’m writing along a process thread instead of a topic thread — re-centering the blog on “someone who tries things.”
The 4 posts were scattered by topic
My past 4 posts were this lineup:
- AWK→Haskell pipeline (a language experiment)
- “I started a blog with Astro” (meta)
- GhostBSD (an OS trial log)
- Parallel Claude Code development without git worktrees (a workflow tip)
By topic they’re all over the place (language / meta / OS / AI workflow). “The shell+FP guy,” “a Claude Code expert,” “a BSD/Linux explorer” — no single axis was enough. So every time I went to write, I’d agonize over “does this topic fit my axis?” and end up not writing. I repeated that pattern over and over.
Write along a process thread, not a topic thread
Look at the same facts from the other direction and the 4 posts share something. As a process — “got curious, tried it, wrote it up” — they’re identical in shape.
Lay topic thread next to process thread and the difference is clear.
| Axis | topic thread | process thread |
|---|---|---|
| What is the thread | what you write about | how you live |
| audience | around the topic | around the personality |
| SEO / authority building | strong | weak |
| fit with fickleness | contradiction | can absorb it |
| precedents | specialist blogs | @simonw / @karpathy / @levelsio |
I’m a fickle person: when I’m interested I can go all-in, but the moment I’m forced into a mold I lose all motivation. That’s not a flaw — it’s a load-bearing constraint, and a strategy that fights my grain always fails in the medium-to-long run. So a topic thread is guaranteed to stall.
Redefine identity along a process thread and it settles in one shot:
a curiosity-driven developer who tries things
What I try is free to drift — that’s the thread. The yardstick switches too, from “is the topic consistent” to “is the process of trying it honest.”
Putting it into practice
- It’s fine if each post has a different topic. Turn whatever I’m stuck on this week into one post.
- Write the cases that didn’t work too (on a process thread, “failure → lesson” rides the same thread).
- Make personality / voice the thread, not SEO authority-building.
- Don’t adopt phases that presuppose self-correction (“ship 2 posts a week”).
Gotchas
- “Fix the fickleness to build consistency” is the wrong route from the start. Correcting a personality trait takes enormous energy, and there’s no guarantee the corrected self stays “you.”
- Check “does it last given my grain” before “efficiency.” Don’t adopt a strategy that won’t last — adopting it locks in the failure.
- Zettelkasten’s original purpose is output. Accumulating permanent notes is a means that supports output; making it the goal gets it backwards. The 9-months-4-posts cadence problem reads as “accumulation works, but output has stalled.”
Results
- The pattern of stalling before I write, over “does this topic fit the axis,” is gone.
- I can treat the existing 4 posts not as “failures” but as “material that already embodied the identity.”
- This blog itself becomes the first test piece for the process thread.
Wrap-up
- The past 4 posts were scattered by topic but coherent by process.
- Re-center the axis on process (“someone who tries things”), not topic.
- Make fickleness load-bearing; don’t adopt strategies that presuppose self-correction.
- Zettelkasten’s purpose is output. Accumulation is a means, not the goal.