A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Or so they say; people often skip the first steps of a process, for better or worse.
They also say that the best way to learn is to teach, and that is both the method and the secondary goal of learning in public: contributing to society’s collective knowledge from one’s unique perspective by letting everyone see both the process and the product of learning.
That’s mainly what I intend this site to be: a place where I share what and how I’m learning, with my mistakes, redos, and improvements all on display. I think there is often just as much value (if not more) in seeing a journey laden with missteps and redirects as there is in seeing the polished, shiny destination.
Nobody feels imposter syndrome when they practice their skills in private. It is in the public eye that the fear of others discovering they are better than us begins to manifest. Yet when we see that those others have gone through situations similar to our own, we begin to understand that our path of learning and growth is very much a shared experience, not a solitary one.
I also want this site, through learning in public, to be a way to keep myself accountable to being consistently engaged in my education. And just maybe, something I write will be valuable to someone else who’s learning similar things, looking for an article or writeup I could have used a year, a month, or even a week ago.
Mostly though, I expect this site to be the digital equivalent of talking to myself as I work through overcoming some sticky problem or learning a difficult concept. If no one else ever gets anything out of it, I hope at least that I will.