To start a blog as a blog skeptic
Why ? Why should I start such a thing as a blog ? I’m still unsure. What I’m sure of, is that I will probably read this in a near future and cringe at myself. But I am also sure that I would cringe at most things I’m starting to do, and if it is preventing me from even starting things, I would not try out much, and that would be quite sad. So, here goes.
If anyone landed here for some reason, hi ! I’m Clément. I am not sure yet what I will post here, if I post at all. To give you some ideas of what might be here, let me present myself briefly.
By the time I write this (March 2025), I am a 24-years-old PhD Student living in Copenhagen and born in France. My background is in physics, and like all physicists bored with physics, I entered into the field of complex systems. I hope that unlike most bored physicists, I manage to avoid “scientific imperialism”, this arrogance of believing that our tools have been very efficient for some tasks (and they have been !), thus they should be the most efficient for all tasks. I am working now on sustainable mobility, and humans moving around are a bit more complex than the closed, perfect, and abstract systems I have learned with.
For my work, I spend some time working with Python using network and geospatial data science, and having to make neat data visualization. As I am not trained as a Computer Scientist, I have a relationship with programming closer to alchemy: I try things based on some obscure texts (StackOverflow answers and the abyss of the documentation of a code) that do not always work or that I don’t understand but apply anyway, and I produce results based on failing fast and trying often, which can give convoluted, ugly, and sub-optimal code, but code is filling its role in the end.
I love to go in parts of the scientific literature that are technically related to my work, but mostly for the sake of it. From critical perspectives on sustainability, to the history of car-centricity, and swerving by social epistemology studies, my Zotero account is a weird collage of fields and studies that I desperately try to find ways to put in my article.
You might find something related to the topics above here. Or, a feverish post written on something completely unrelated. We’ll see !
I usually avoid any public presence online, or at least any personnal one. For the sake of the exercise, I will avoid removing things and instead focus on adding some, but this is a non-binding contract I’m doing with myself.
My relationship with writing
Don’t get me wrong: I love to write. I started at 11 to write frequently, and continued at a somewhat irregular pace since then. But after a blissful period of writing on obscure forums with foreigners my writing activity has been mostly by myself, at night, and the results stored in a folder no one will ever open (hopefully). And this is ranging from fiction, poetry, but also strange rants and soliloquies addressed to no one.
The (potential) issue here is not with writing. It is with having my writing online and accessible to everyone. On the plus side, probably no one will read this, and if they do, then I guess they might have a kind eye for my babbling in the first place. Also, writing in English and not in my native language, French, is making it easier to feel less personnal about all of this. But if I am doing it, I guess I also hope to get something out of it being online. What, I’m not so sure yet.
Is a blog really a good idea ?
I don’t know, honestly. I’m a bit skeptical of the different blog posts I saw about how it can improve your writing. I mean, sure, writing will make you better at writing, but it doesn’t have to be a blog, does it ? I guess the added value is the pressure of writing that comes when showing the results to others, but I don’t know if this is enough. Especially with most of the blogs receiving little to no attention: if no one is watching, your writing will improve mostly for you. That’s part of the reason why peer-review is so great.
On top of that, I saw that comment made from academics. But when it comes to academic writing, I feel they are very different tasks. I love to write, thus my first and foremost goal when writing personnal things is my own satisfaction. And this satisfaction is not necessarily aligned with being readable and understandable for others. Otherwise, I would ask for reviews and revision from others until I get so sick of my writing that I don’t want to see it anymore, and there it might start to look fine.
One way it might be useful is to redirect my procranistation tendencies toward something more relevant. Instead of an endless search of fast dopamine online, writing would be either better for my mind, or my soul. But I don’t know if the shift would happen from this procrastination, or from work that I have yet another good excuse to not do. This has still to be empirically tested.
Another potential reason I found is that it can serve as a reminder. You can do that with a private journal (which I already do), but a blog can also be a reminder of more technical or professionnal endeavors, the ones you would probably not write otherwise. By having to write something here that I’m not too ashamed, it might help me to sediment knowledge. As a big believer of the “teach to learn” approach, it could also push me to get a better understanding of something I might otherwise pragmatically use as some kind of a black box.
As you can see, I’m really trying to find good reasons (or excuses) why, but in the end the only one that I can really believe in is that it sounds fun. Maybe ?
Last note to my future self
If you read this again, don’t be too harsh with yourself. About this, or about other things. It’s probably not very good, or very useful if that matters. It could be improved. But it doesn’t mean that it is harmful either.
It should be enough.