Namaste Internet!

Hello World! This is my space where I talk about the meta aspects of the blog, like its lore, underlying motivations and the direction it is intended to take.

The Journey Begins

I first got the idea to make my own blog wayback in 2020 as a way to dump my ramblings and IITB experiences. One of the primary motivating factors was to publish topics that frequently arose in my conversations with others. I had even put up a coming soon page, with the plan to use the random stuff page until I could organize my thoughts. But well, it (almost) never happened. I was too caught up with courses, assignments, watching anime or making CS101 problem sets that rarely anybody solved to find time for it. As a result, my wishlist of blog ideas kept piling up. It didn’t help that I was never really passionate about writing, having never maintained any sort of diary/journal nor tried my hands at reviews/essay writing. My only comfort was in writing proofs xD.

The first big jump came in 2022, while I was TAing for the then CS101 batch. I got inspired by the coding tips provided by Andrews to the students and thought to add my own two cents from my multiple TAship experiences. The original write-up was super rough. It was more like a glorified list, but it eventually evolved into this post.

But well, it seemed like this was the end.

The Light of Dawn

Fast forward to December 2023, I was in my fifth year, having recently completed the 9^th semester consisting of DDP-Stage I (Dual Degree Project) and two heavy courses. You would think I had all the time to relax and have fun in this winter vacation, but I was stuck in a full-on quarter-life crisis, a time filled with frustration and existential insecurities. I was terribly bored; neither anime/TV shows nor random youtube videos seemed enjoyable. And so, after putting it off for years, I finally resolved to shift from consuming others’ content to creating my own, and thus began my journey into blogging.

Took me three years, but, better late than never :)

Out of the Cradle

The first, and the toughest task was to find a good blogging template. Being someone with very little interest in modern web development, I needed a template that could already do most things right. And I was unable to find one even after hours of searching for free jekyll themes. I loved the UI and workflow of Wermos’s blog, which we both had already discussed upon. In fact, its content was another one of my motivating factors, and it was becoming very tempting to use a template similar to his. But then, with a stroke of luck, I stumbled on a site¹ listing some of the best Jekyll blogging themes and that’s where I found Chirpy, the theme I ultimately ended up going with!

I quickly picked the name “Somewhere Not Here”, which is actually the title of the first episode of Vinland Saga and also one of my favourite musical piece.

I have always placed emphasis on layered names, which often have double (or even triple) meanings.
For example, Somewhere Not Here has a beautiful interpretation that will retain its relevance even if (hypothetically of course) I were to lose interest in Vinland Saga.

Pop quiz: Can you guess the hidden meaning(s) behind my nickname, “Wrath”?

End of the Prologue

After making few aesthetic changes to the template, I was all set and kicked things off with the timelines. They were the easiest to make, all I needed to do was to gather my thoughts on certain things and lay them out visually. It also helped me become familiar with the Jekyll’s collections feature, which allowed for convenient and automatic updates to the timeline. Then I started by rewriting my CS101 tips, expanding it to a whole new level, and honestly felt pretty proud with the end result :D.

Hurray! I finally had something to show-off.

Slave

Well, get ready for a time skip, if you thought I would be churning out blog posts now that I had everything setup, then oh boy, were you wrong. By now, I had became a …

… slave to originality

There were so many ideas that I ditched because someone else had already done an amazing job on it, and I felt like I can barely improve upon it. Examples include the self-helpish stuff and the philosophical deep dives made by my friends and also, the surprisingly intuitive and exciting math articles available on the internet.
Even for posts that looked generic, I gave them a unique twist to set them apart from the rest.

… slave to perfection

So many of my ideas just rot in the draft-stage as it requires a truckload of time and effort to polish them into blogs comparable to the quality with the rest of the site. Even after publishing them, I only popularise them after some time has elapsed. This allows me to share it with a smaller set of people and get feedback.
Though, the biggest bottleneck is undoubtedly generating graphics; my obsession with creating perfectly vectorised (or otherwise lossless) images that are compatible with both light and dark modes leads to unimaginable levels of time waste. Such as the next image, which was improvised by our artist aishik. Check out his art!

When will I be free? 🌊

Oath

Slowly but steadily, I got going with a quick and dirty trick of recycling my own content from other courses/quizzes/reviews/tips. But even then, something felt off; I thought it lacked a personal touch, stuff that matters to me even if it doesn’t really mean anything to anyone else (like this post ;). And with that realisation, I started working on ambitious projects such as Hunter × Hunter and Philosophy in Anime.

Even though those posts brought in a ton of traffic to the site, I just really enjoyed going back and rereading them myself; finding mistakes and refining them. That’s when I realised, for me to feel truly satisfied, I need to design blogs that I would enjoy reading as an audience myself.

Two Paths

So yeah, it became pretty clear that I will pursue the path of pure enjoyment, maybe with a faint hope that others can find enjoyment in the same things I do.

This is a complete departure to the often-advised route for aspiring content creators, which is about chasing trends, appeasing the almighty algorithm, and constantly grinding to stay relevant until the content becomes the algorithm itself.² Well, most content creators have another problem to worry about, revenue! But that’s not an issue here, as I strive to keep this blog always accessible, leaving it up to you to decide if it’s worth your time :)

Footnotes

1. I have forgotten which website recommended Chirpy to me, maybe it was this? ↩︎

2. My Video Went Viral. Here’s Why by Veritasium ↩︎