It has been a while since the last post was written on this site (2 months ago). Looking broadly, since its birth 2.5 years ago, the blog has seen a steady reduction in post frequency, as seen below. Why is this happening?

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My blogging pattern

Let’s first start with some history. I was inspired about blogging by Huyen Chip. In one of her travel books, she told her story of finding a place for her to stay overnight in a random country. It was her blog that has helped her convince a host that she is trust-worthy enough to be staying in their home. (What kind of con artist would invest years building a blog to get the trust of a random stranger?) I find that idea of establishing a (one-way) connection via blogging brilliant.

I started this blog in March, 2023 with one post about one of my trips to Canada.

A few months later, I met Christian Robert, a French statistician who released a new blog post every day. He wrote about papers (he reads or writes), book chapters, cities, and social issues. Via the blog, he appeared to be not only a productive scholar but also an interesting person. It was such a nice role model that I started to blog once every few days.

At first, I blogged about almost everything in my mind. It was my first year of PhD when I moved to a new country, started a new academic program, and thus had so many things to share with the world. I shared that I read ACL proceedings, that I did a lot of things in my first two semesters, that I traveled to places, that I read books, etc. Not just to merely share my insights, those posts are also where I showed off my interesting life. In the first 3 months, I released around 15 posts per month.

After that, it looks like my life was no longer as new and exciting. The monthly post count dropped to 3-4. The blog became a monthly commentary channel on various topics. I think this is still a fine thing to have.

The blog captures my personal interests over the years. Below is the count of tags over time, which is how the topics are kept track on this blog. The top five tags are Life, CS (computer science), ML (machine learning), Travel, and Academia. Other notable but not popular topics are Sports, Education, Music, and Book.

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Is this blog dying?

Recently, based on the monthly post counts, it looks like the blog is dying. For the first time after 2.5 years of releasing something every month, last month saw no new posts. Perhaps the writer is going through some life crisis, or he is simply not prioritizing blogging over other things in his life. From his perspective, though, he feels that this blog will not die in the next two years, for a few reasons.

First, not only as a form of learning, blogging has been a good source of therapy for him. When he writes about what he learned, he feels safe that there is a place he can come back to to revise the knowledge that was once his. When he writes about life, he takes refuge in the healing power of contemplation, knowing that he is not letting the days slip by mindlessly. By maintaining the blogging habit, he knows that he is growing a reservoir of values that he is sharing with the world. Also growing is his credibility and the ease for him to quickly connect with people sharing the same interests.

Second, he will have at least two more years in grad school. His life will probably not change too much, and thus the tendency to blog.

What might this blog become?

It will still be just a blog, nothing more. It is fun to share what I learn as a life-long learner. It is fun to share my technical insights as I continue my study of AI systems – there is a joy in publishing your ideas and findings immediately instead of going through a formal review process. And it is fun to share my creative expressions – will I write a poem here on day?

The better part is that, when sharing those things with the world, I am also sharing it with my future self.