A beginning

On ham-fisted vim and seeking discomfort.

Intentions

New day, new blog. Here’s what I’m intending to do here:

• Write technical things to reinforce learning and mentally untangle my thoughts
• Keep it brief and low-pressure - finding time to write is hard
• Format and tone may vary: one liners, long form writing, technical notes, professional and absurd, formal and informal. I’m still finding my voice here.
• I am the audience, but the information is public. I’m not here to entertain or please anyone.
• It’s ok to be wrong.

Bonus: I suck at vim

This file is written in markdown. I’d intended to open this in Obsidian or Bear for a nice clutter-free writing experience, but of course that’s too easy so I’m bumbling around in nvim instead. I’m already in the terminal, so why not. I know enough vim to do some damage and ham-fistedly have my way, but navigation is painful and every time I learn a new trick it goes in a big bucket of key combinations which I promptly forget.

I also have a tendency to overthink my writing, proofread and redraft and rewrite until it’s just perfect and oh look is that the time? By increasing the editing friction, perhaps I can pit these two weaknesses against each other. Forging new neural pathways via the refining fire of sheer stubbornness or something. Or perhaps I’ll just give up and act like a normal person.

Vim things I did over and over while writing this

Yes, I’m making myself write this down for maximum pain

• dw- delete word
• db - delete back
• w - go forward one word
• b - go back one word
• 0 - beginning of line
• $ - end of line
• Frequently hitting the delete key when in normal mode, expecting it to act like a regular document
• Frequently using the arrow keys and forgetting my trusty friends hjkl

I’m sure there are multiple ways to do everything in vim, and at some point I might write my own little manual as a learning exercise.