Foundations: First Blog Post
Tags: firstpost, django, automation, webdev
Published: 2022-03-05 18:30:44

As I sit here preparing to write before these two Chrome windows -- one presenting a blank canvas and the other claiming to present [Expert Advice](https://inter-growth.co/content-marketing/write-first-blog-post/) on how to fill it -- I can't help but to think of that episode of SpongeBob SquarePants in which he pours his heart and spongey soul into the first word of that 800 word essay for Boating School in a subconscious attempt to escape the work of actual writing.  

The. I feel you, SpongeBob. 

Luckily, I don't have a blog post due first thing in the morning -- nor am I attending Boating School -- so I'm not technically procrastinating, but one could argue this cartoon-themed introduction on what's supposed to be a developer-themed blog post is just as much a useless decoration as SpongeBob's highly intricate calligraphy.

One would be wrong. The theme of this post is just that: 

### I don't know what I'm writing about yet.
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I _could_ say that I started writing this post with a clear direction in mind -- that I'm taking you, the reader, on a journey into the great beyond, like I'm some sort of confident safari tour guide with one of those nice pairs of binoculars that he doesn't even use because he sees that far ahead. I _could_ recommend that you leave your mental umbrella behind because there's nothing but clarity ahead, and that there's no need to use Waze because I've been memorizing the map to where we're going and studying traffic patterns since I was three years old. I _could_ promise that I won't use any more ridiculous analogies.

As much as I'd like those things to be true, they're not. I honestly don't even know what the next post is going to be about. It could be about puppies, and how they're all ultimately good (it's been formally verified with a symbolic model checker). Or, it could be about my experience with the automation of enterprise-level web application deployment.  **Either way, I'm pretty stoked.** I've never really maintained my own official blog on a platform like this with the expectation that other people will be reading what I'm writing, but I've reached a point in my career where **I'd like to start prioritizing engagement with the developer community** for a couple of reasons. First, I feel like I've collected a decent amount of development experience in the forms of challenges, successes, and failures worth sharing with others. Secondly, and more importantly, there is a ton to be learned from other developers. The ever-changing nature of tech guarantees that we're only ever scratching the surface, and the set of learnable things, like {% katex inline %} \mathbb{R}{% endkatex %}, is uncountably infinite. 

## What To Expect From My Blog

While I don't know exactly what I'm aiming for yet, there are a number of topics that I'm considering for upcoming posts:

- [Django](https://www.djangoproject.com/) development tips and tricks - for context, I started web development with Django in 2017 at [College of Charleston](https://cofc.edu) under guidance from [Dr. Ayman Hajja](https://www.amhajja.com/), an absolute Django expert (who also happens to be a source of inspiration for starting this blog)
- Building custom automation frameworks in Python
- Setting up custom CI/CD pipelines using [GitHub Actions](https://github.com/features/actions), [Docker](https://www.docker.com/), and [adnanh's](https://github.com/adnanh) [webhook project](https://github.com/adnanh/webhook)
- Using [Ansible](https://www.ansible.com/) for automating infrastructure management
- Using [Icinga 2](https://icinga.com/docs/icinga-2/latest/doc/01-about/) with [Icinga Director](https://icinga.com/docs/icinga-director/latest/doc/01-Introduction/) for network monitoring and alerting
- other niche "how-tos" 
- the work/life line and the challenge of defining that as either `border:20px solid black;` or `border:none;`
- projects for school that I'm working on or excited about
- the intersection of being both a fully remote student and a fully remote IT employee 
- maintaining interest in [hobbies](https://www.sketchyactivity.com) outside of software and web development, and allocating time to those things (with focus on avoiding or dealing with burnout from work/school)
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## First Post Feedback

I want to thank you for reading this far, even if you're a spider automatically crawling this text -- there'd be no web without you, you creepy crawler, and I've grown to _love_ the web. For you non-arachnids still reading, leave a comment on this post if you liked it, or even if you didn't like it, and let's connect! If there's anything I've mentioned in this first post that sounds interesting, or if there's something I didn't mention that you'd like me to consider as a topic for a future post, let me know!