I Miss Writing

I miss writing. I stopped updating this site at the start of December 2025 for two reasons: extremely low viewer counts and a newborn child. But then I found myself looking back and using what I'd written.

Photo credit: Ala z

I'd have a conversation with my brother-in-law about the feeling of "I could do this in 5 minutes, so why isn't it done already?" and to add to the conversation I could quickly find where I'd reacted to some interesting thoughts on that. And some earlier musings too. I was about to talk to someone at a company I liked and wanted to refresh my memory about the CEO's book. Easy enough to re-read my post.

Why I stopped

I started writing these articles to help raise my profile as part of my job search, and the experiment seemed to show that I wasn't getting the further attention. I had a few views on LinkedIn where I cross-posted, but views on saprobst.com were minimal which indicated that I wasn't getting any "real" engagement where people were reading more than the headlines. With the commitment of several hours per week to the blog while caring for three children under five, hunting for a full-time job, and all the other work to keep plates spinning, it seemed like time to stop.

Why I want to restart

Cory Doctorow is right: publishing articles is a form of journaling that lets me get my thoughts out for sharing with others (like my brother in law) and instills more discipline than journaling. I've found myself referencing my old articles to remind myself of books, projects, and how I've felt over the past twelve months. I've also built a large backlog of "oh, I want to write this down!" about many topics, so this counts as my therapy in getting them out. I would like to get to a once-per-week posting schedule to keep more time for other tasks, but I'll see how I feel.

Smugness

As I was writing today, I stumbled across my article on the Lunar Gateway from late October 2025 where I advocated against it. And it turns out that policymakers agree (gift link to the Economist). So that's another advantage of writing: time-stamped opinions so I can say "I said that a while ago!"

Similarly, I'm excited for plug-in solar power like might be approved in New York City. As I wrote in November 2025, plug-in solar panels are a great decentralized option if the regulation allowing and certifying them can be put in place.

Finally, I still intend to follow up on my posts about the aircraft carrier and the future of naval combat, which I started laying out in September 2025. The recent US operations in Iran have proven our current (hopefully solvable) inability to produce and stock sufficient munitions. As I wrote then, "Most importantly, [guided-missile destroyers] would need a massive industry to feed them missiles as quickly as they can fire them, and another fleet of reloading ships to enable the destroyers to stay on-station between battles." Instead, we have a US Navy that is running out of food and unable to deliver care packages to sailors.