About
Where expectations meet reality.
Website
My work on this website began in late spring 2019. After setting up Hugo (opens in a new tab) with the book theme (opens in a new tab) , I started writing two larger pieces, one of which would eventually become Change and Stability.
The first three years, I spent a massive amount of time just researching and writing while trying to figure out how to approach my new website. The initial idea was simple: in order for this digital place to become an actual long-term project, I had to get myself to truly care about it. In other words, it had to be interesting and fun. This took about a year. Then, the urge to create backups of my efforts would emerge — and I knew I had a long-term project in my hand.
Meanwhile — and while incredibly patient in the process —, in 2022 my wife gently pushed me to finally publish the website. And to be honest, if she hadn’t, this place would probably still solely exist on localhost. That’s all it took to be interesting and fun. Anyway, here we are.
Today, I treat the public-facing website somewhat strategically to think about publishing while the writing and creating behind the scenes happens mostly in an organic fashion. This had also led me to move from the original theme to another one called Blowfish (opens in a new tab) .
For a while, Blowfish was good enough. It had taught me a lot about Hugo themes as I was trying to figure out its structure in an attempt to modify the theme’s appearance to better fit my publication types. Ultimately, however, what I really needed was something perfectly tailored to my requirements. So there was only one option left: in summer 2025, I took some time to build my own and current theme from scratch.
Writing
Everything on this website is written, edited, and proofread by yours truly. Hence, the lack of perfection. Occasionally, I have someone close to me take a look, but for the most part the whole process is a bit of a solo affair. Just the way it started out all those years ago.
Of course, back when I began to write on/for this website, technology was in a very different place. Today, artificial intelligence could take care of the writing — when intelligently interacted with. This is why taking my time and thinking about how to approach this place has paid off massively. And to know myself: I’m not someone who chooses the act of writing because I like the idea of being a writer. I write because I have to. It’s an urge that’s been within me ever since I learned how to read. More importantly, however, I love to write. In combination with my headphones and some good music, I shall remain perfectly pleased.
ShareAlike
In this day and age, financial value could be extracted from my efforts behind creating what you see on this website — not from the creations themselves. Once published on a website, they are digitally accessible and thus abundant by default. No paywall nor copyright is going to change that.
Therefore, most of my work on this website is ShareAlike (opens in a new tab) . But if I’m perfectly honest, besides my disdain for intellectual property, the reason I choose this kind of licensing (or, at times, Public Domain) is because, deep down, I’m still occasionally battling with my cynicism. I’m a product of my times and surroundings, after all.
That being said, I won’t use a NonCommercial (opens in a new tab) license because if you’re clever enough to build on my work and earn money under a BY-SA license, you deserve to be financially rewarded. Besides, if people decide to financially reward your adaptations instead of my work, it probably just means that, in their eyes, my efforts aren’t good enough. Still, I’m proud of what I do as I can honestly say: on this website, I won’t be able to do any better. Of course, I naively keep trying…
Illustrations
As opposed to the writing, illustrations are primarily a means to an end for me: to complement the writing. Unfortunately, words alone can only go so far when it comes to expressing ourselves. By branching out to other modalities we can thus make complexity more accessible at the fraction of the effort required by a purely linguistic approach.
As such, I do work with (generative) A.I. to help me illustrate my ideas. The reason is simple: as I lack the dexterity to do it myself and as I want to prioritize the research and writing over practicing how to illustrate by hand, I use my linguistic skills to enhance my rudimentary drawing abilities instead.
To get a bit of an understanding behind my approach, I suggest you take a look at the following piece:
The difference in effort behind the illustrations you’ll discover on this website can be rather extreme: once (linguistically) conceptualized, some images take mere seconds to come into existence. Others, however, can take days of manual work even in conjunction with A.I..
Still, where I draw a line is at the conceptual level: I do not work with A.I. as a substitute for the thinking. That would remove the authenticity and rob me of my purpose — and even worse: of my fun.
With that in mind, unless stated otherwise and except for the thumbnails in the Spotlight section (which is supposed to give you a glimpse into other people’s creations), all visual materials on this website have been fully conceived by myself. Also, the thumbnails are usually somewhat (metaphorically) connected to the publication they accompany. So while some of them are fairly quickly created, I still put some thought into them.
Privacy
Since I value my own privacy, I definitely want to make sure that yours remains intact as well. In short, this website:
- is completely ad-free
- has no analytics whatsoever
There’s no reason for me to know who and how many people visit my humble digital abode — unless you want to let me know by getting in touch. Also, I do not wish to know which ones of my writings are more or less popular. Besides, those aspects come second to my desire to write about what interests me and how I would like to express that. Remember: authenticity, purpose and so on.
That being said, I’m always open to discussion, feedback and suggestions. If they align with my writings, I will find a way to integrate them into my work.
Lastly, I try to make it a rule not to link to websites that don’t respect their visitors’ privacy or come with ads. However, if I happen to link to a website that does not completely satisfy that rule (e.g. a source I want to use in one of my writings), I do recommend the open source browser add-on uBlock Origin (opens in a new tab) . In its simplest form, it is a very effective ad blocker — and it comes with plenty of advanced features.
RSS
As I publish whenever I feel like, the best way to keep being informed about new publications is RSS (opens in a new tab) . You have four options:
Author
In a nutshell, I have a background in curiosity and my experience comes from:
- work on things I enjoy
- stuff that I find tedious
- people who are kind enough to share some of their wisdom with me
- not so kind people who put obstacles in my way
Contact
If you like to know more or just share your thoughts, feel free to get in touch via email.