For every topic cover here, there are experts whose mileage, experience and depth far outreaches that of mine. I mean, how could I even compare my skills to that of Erik Evans, Rich Hickey, Jeff Patton, Alberto Brandolini, Gene Kim, Marty Cagan, Nassim Taleb, Ray Dalio and many others? And why the hell even write a book? I think that when one is interested in the source material directly, it's much better to go directly to the source and study their work. At least this is what has worked for me and how I tried to capture some of the meaning those seasoned experts tried to convey. I think there's a shared thread in those thoughts. It feels invisible, hard to put to words. One feels it when work is done within that *beam* or not. I love that feeling, that being *on the beam*. So why write this? As I reflect on this, I see multiple things. One thing, perhaps a personal idiosynchracy of mine, is that I find joy in the act of writing. Despite my writing being quite clumsy, I use writing to *clarify* what I actually think. And I find that act of clarification quite joyful. God, I actually *love it*. Especially when I sometimes manage to be *on the beam* of writing, that is quite a satisfying feeling. Another thing that I like about writing is *discovering lasting principles*. The whole next chapter is about principles, so I'll skip this for now. And then there's another thing. As I look at my resume, I see that I actually haven't worked for FAANG companies, nor for any technologically popular teams. I don't stand behind any significant open-source project, or any other side-project by that matter. The companies I worked for are, I would say, regular companies with their everyday difficulties, with IT being mostly a cost center. I don't think I have any visible business-success street-creds to go by, apart from my resume and few unmaintained small open-source projects. So I'd say, that I'm an OK engineer. And this is the key point I'd like to make. It took me a while to accept that I'm not an extraordinary engineer. And I'm fine with that, because it is not my ambition to be on the level of those people mentioned on the top. It's not *on my beam.* What is on my beam, however, is trying to somehow write this book. And I think this is an important message to broadcast in these times. The general push in society seems to be about growth driven by external motivations rather than focusing attention inwards and listening for motivations that are within. > I used to love blogging, but now it's been a few years since I've written a blog post. What changed? At some point, everything got serious. I started to only want to publish the best things, so I didn't publish at all. I stopped writing to just riff on things, or to explore things in a way that was honest to where I'm actually at. > - [internetVin](https://internetvin.ghost.io/), an anonymous new blogger --- - [[Collection of quotes on writing (90%)]]