I’ve always associated showing my work to math class, as a way to prove that I knew the process of solving whatever type of problem we were learning or more likely as a way to show where I went wrong. I never thought of it as a valuable way to grow my career and, most importantly, myself until I read Austin Kleon’s book Show Your Work!.
Kleon’s premise is that sharing the process of creating some work is just as, if not more, valuable than the finished product. While this book was written for artists who wish to get discovered, the concepts he describes are useful to any creative person to internalize, including programmers like myself.
I’ve wanted to start a blog for a long time now, but I never did because I felt like I had nothing to say. Kleon calls a personal website a “self-invention machine”: a place for you to show your process, how you got to where you are, to talk about your passions, the problems you’ve solved, and how you solved them.
That’s what I want this space to be.
The content I put here will be rather diverse as my interests are rather diverse, but at this point in my life they mostly revolve around improving myself as a human, a wife, a programmer, and an artist. I want to start contributing to the communities that will help me improve in those areas because creativity comes from community, not genius or talent. The best way for me to do that is by sharing my process, curiosities, and inspirations. I still have a lot of learning to do and would like to document some of that here.
I’d definitely recommend Show Your Work! to anyone who feels they need to be special or genius to participate in some community. This book told me that joining a community just means being open about my success and failures. I need to share my failures as much as I need to share my successes because ultimately what matters is that I don’t give up and I show my work.