I first dabbled with blog writing back in the summer of 2012, before I went off to university. By then, I had gotten into personal development, and had created a Wordpress site to document my journey. When I got to university, I stopped writing for that blog and completely forgot about it until recently.
Halfway through university, I started another Wordpress site. It was also about personal development, but was more focused on giving advice. Due to my focus on school at the time, I quickly stopped writing. However, during the summers, I found time to experiment with Quora - both answering questions and writing blog posts - and even had an answer go viral.
By then, I had realized that I wanted to pursue a career in software development, instead of the usual route of academia as a physics graduate. I started teaching myself web development. I built my own portfolio website and posted some blog posts there advertising my intentions to transition from physics to software.
When I eventually got a job in healthcare IT, I turned my focus away from web development and my portfolio website. I threw myself into the world of healthcare integration, and all of the backend work that came with it.
I eventually purchased my own domain name and hosted my personal site through GitHub pages. I settled on a simple site were I periodically published blog posts on personal development and productivity. I tried publishing my blog posts on Medium as well to gain traffic.
Earlier this year, however, I realize that I no longer needed a portfolio website aimed at getting a job as a new graduate. I already had one that I was happy with. However, I still wanted to have a personal website that was useful. Inspired by Travis Neilson, I started to rethink what my identity was.
I have always enjoyed solving problems and building things with code. I am fortunate enough to do this on a daily basis through my job. It’s something that I have worked hard to be good at. Now that I am almost 5 years into my career in healthcare IT, I want to give back.
My new personal site identity - and by extension, my own identity - is to help people to solve problems and build useful things through my writing.