Juha-Matti Santala
Community Builder. Dreamer. Adventurer.

I started writing Weeklies

A while back, I started a very personal newsletter called What's up with Juhis where I shared monthly what I've been doing: new blog posts, videos, talks and so on but also notes about my personal life. At the end of each monthly newsletter, I shared 2-3 things created by other people: articles, blog posts, videos, tweets, art and so on.

Recently I participated in a discussion about Javascript's callback functions and I remembered I had read this great blog post about it but I couldn't remember who wrote it. Luckily, I had shared it with my newsletter readers so I dove deep into the archives and found the link to share.

That inspired me to start collecting those links somewhere else in a public place. A place to share with others, kinda in a newsletter format but not through a full newsletter system.

Another thing that inspired me to start writing these notes were Marko Wallin's Rule of Tech blog's Short Notes on Tech and a Finnish daily tech news newsletter Transistori.

I ran the newsletter down a while back since it wasn't quite doing what I wanted it to do or be. I'll most likely revisit the idea but meanwhile, I'm doing this.

Weeklies

Introducing: Weeklies

Weeklies, living on this website at /weeklies, are short collections of notes mostly on things I've read or watched and wanted to share. I'm not set on stone with the format yet so there may also be other stuff as I discover what I want to share in the Weeklies format.

I'm expecting to write them once a week on Sundays (and still continuing to write these blog posts of my own every Wednesday) since I tend to read a lot and run into interesting articles all the time but I'm not hell-bent on keeping that schedule. If there's a week without anything note-worthy, then I'll skip it.

And just like my blog, the content will be mostly developer related but also all over the place – things that brought me joy.

I have already written the first two weeklies, one at the end of 2021 and one last Sunday, go check them out!

And if you want to subscribe to those, I've created an RSS feed for them as well so you can get my weekly notes to your favorite RSS reader fresh from the digital bakery.

A sneak peek

Here's the 01/2022 Weeklies as a sneak peek for the blog readers:

How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably

Oskar shared this on his Twitter at the start of the year and while I don't agree some of the stuff (especially some of the quotes that reek hard survivorship bias), it's a great reminder of the importance of compounding returns and focusing on honing the process over an individual outcome.

I've been really struggling with this throughout my life but especially during the pandemic when it feels like I'm not making any positive progress and don't even have the ability right now to do anything about it. Being on a plateau of progress feels like such a defeat, even though it's inevitable.

Etherea Magazine - Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy

Since last fall, I've been a subscriber to Etherea Magazine. I ran into it in Imgur and since I don't really have the focus these days to read full-length books, Etherea's short-story format has been incredible. It's perfect for reading while commute, drinking morning coffee or taking a short break at work. My favorite story so far is from the first issue (August 2020). It's written by Alexander Funk and it's called Inheritance. Highly recommend checking it out.

I Literally Just Told You

I'm a huge fan of British comedy and game shows and Jimmy Carr hosts the new I Literally Just Told You game show all about paying attention and remembering what's happening. So far, there's been 4 episodes and each on has been very uniquely different: first one being a rather serious quiz game, second one being so hilarious and fun and third being a celebrity episode with such an awesome panel. Fourth one was back to more serious but a really high quality quizzing with a great storyline. I wish they will direct it more towards the funny side in the future since that just works so much better.

Coworking With a Friend to Write More

Accountability buddies are a fantastic idea and something I'd like to explore more to bring more structure to my writing process and also for more than writing.

However, that has to wait for better times so I'm keeping this article as a reminder for myself to set something like this up when I'm less burnt out.

Currently my blog writing is often "I'll write something on the last night before Wednesday" and I'd like to bring more pre-planning and organization back into my process.

If you want more Weeklies, head over to /weeklies and subscribe to the RSS feed.

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