Friction

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines friction as “the rubbing of one body against another.”

When I’m talking about friction, I’m not talking about rubbing bodies. I’m musing about why I simply can’t consistently maintain a blog.

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Theoretically, blogging is right up my alley. I’m a professional web developer so shouldn’t I develop the web in my free time? I have so many wonderful thoughts to share with the world. I’m not on social media, so where are my fans to go?

Genuinely, it does seem like something that could be fulfilling. It’s a way to keep in touch with friends and family, show potential employers that I’m not too crazy, share some technical bits sometimes and personal things other times, and generally foster the version of the internet I want to exist.

Writing is also just a healthy thing to do!

I feel all these ways and I feel like a massive hypocrite, as this is my second post in, what, six months? So what’s up? How can I want to blog, but not blog?

Friction!

It’s the invisible resistance that stops good intentions from becoming reality. The energy it takes to cross from “I should blog” to “I did blog” is greater than I’d like to admit.

Sure, I could clench my teeth and blog for 30 days straight, but I want this to serve me. I can’t do that when the resistance is too high.

So: identify the friction and reduce it.

Attempts at Reducing Friction

1. Hand-rolled JSX pages
   “I’ll just commit and SSH into the server to reload. It’s only a few commands,” he thought (ignorantly.)
   Reality: too many auth steps, too many commands, and I don’t want to think about writing code while I’m trying to articulate myself.

2. Self-hosted Strapi
   Didn’t stick. Uploading images felt tedious, the editor didn’t have spellcheck, and sure, I could write elsewhere and paste, but that’s more friction.

3. Substack
   Closer! But it felt a bit removed from my own site, and it didn’t meet me where I actually write—usually not near a computer.

4. Current setup
   I’m writing this on my iPhone in the native Notes app. I built a Shortcut that:

   • Encodes the text and sends a PUT request to GitHub to create a new post.
   • Triggers a GitHub Action that SSHes into my server, pulls changes, and rebuilds the site.

Will It Stick?

Couldn’t tell you — check the timestamps. I hope so. What I do know is that I can write where and when I want to write, which lowers the barrier enough that this might actually happen more than a handful of times.

If you want the scripts, email me!! I would love to chat. There are a dozen ways to improve this, I’m sure, but for now, I’m happy to have moved from “I should blog” to “I did blog.” Let’s see if reducing friction keeps the momentum.