Well, here it is, the very first post on my new blog! I’ve got a bunch of topics I want to write about, but I’m going to start by trying to answer a very simple question: why on earth should anyone spend their precious time reading what I write here?

Essentially, I’ve got four kinds of readers in mind.

Firstly, there are friends and family who know me personally, and who have perhaps been wondering what I’ve been up to in the months since I quit my job at Google. Well, now you know!

Secondly, there are my fellow DIYers in the van building community. I’ve learned a ton from reading other people’s accounts of their van building experiences, on YouTube, on other websites, and on the various online forums devoted to this kind of thing. Maybe someone else will get inspired by something I post here, or at the very least learn from my mistakes! Other, more experienced van builders might just enjoy vicariously reliving the van-building experience, while not losing any skin from their own knuckles. And for those of you who dream of one day building out your own van but haven’t got going yet, perhaps this will motivate you to get started… or to pursue a less crazy dream instead!

The third group is my fellow software engineers, especially those who are tired of being an office drone, and are considering giving it all up to pursue some kind of personal passion engineering project. Maybe it’s a van, maybe it’s a boat, maybe something else. There are interesting parallels and contrasts between software engineering, and “van-gineering”, some of which I’ll be writing about here.

The final reader that I’m targeting is, well, me. It sounds a bit narcissistic, but even if nobody else ever reads this blog, I’d probably still write it. Building out the van has become a far bigger project than I’d imagined, and it’s interesting to write down some of the thoughts and ideas that are going into it. If nothing else, future me is sure to get a laugh out of the nonsense that I wrote here.

Welcome to the blog, everyone!