Beginning the way

There’s a word I keep coming back to: michi (道). It means a road, a journey — but it’s also the -dō that ends words like jūdō, shodō, and chadō. In those, it stops meaning “a road to somewhere” and starts meaning something closer to a discipline you devote yourself to. The way of the gentle art. The way of the brush. The way of tea.

I wanted a name for this site that held both senses at once, because that’s what I’m trying to do here — treat the ordinary work of building software as a path worth walking deliberately.

Why a site, and why now

I’ve spent years shipping things into other people’s repos, other people’s products. This is the small act of branching out: a place that’s mine, where the writing and the work accumulate in one direction over time. Not a portfolio frozen at its best moment, but a path you can watch being walked — including the uneven stretches.

The bar I’m setting myself is low on purpose:

• Write when I’ve actually learned something, not on a schedule.
• Keep the projects honest — ongoing and archived are valid states.
• Let the design get out of the way of the words.

On keeping it simple

The aesthetic here is deliberate. Ink black, washi paper, a ladder of greys, and a single vermilion seal — the colours of sumi-e and of a hanko stamp. The Japanese idea of 間 (ma), negative space as an active part of the composition, is doing most of the work. Most of this page is empty, and that’s the point.

The way is made by walking it.

So — first step taken. Let’s see where the road goes.