Absolute nonsense brings me joy

Author

Jonathan Yeong
February 14, 2025

A little while back I started doing something called Atomic Essays. The idea was to write a short 300 word essay and share it every day.

The concept was cool, and the writing prompts seemed "industry-standard":

  • Write about what you’re consuming

  • Respond or expand on someone else’s writing.

  • Curate “the best of” any industry/topic

  • Teach a reader “How to” do something.

  • Share a powerful life lesson you learned

I've seen these prompts in other places, and I've seen plenty of content fit into those prompts. No shade to this type of content. It's helpful content that's shaped my dev career.

But for me, writing like this was a slog. The words I put on the page felt hollow, and I felt too sales-y. Okay, so maybe this is a me problem, but I think there's a principle here.

Prioritise creating content you enjoy, instead of content you're supposed to create.

Take Simone Giertz, for example, she builds robots that fail spectacularly at performing simple tasks. It doesn't fit any of the prompts above. It's absolute nonsense, unnecessary, and I love it.

The world needs more content like shitty robots.

Another example is one of my favourite posts is from Cassidy Williams, 33 pure gold ideas. A list of unfinished jokes. One of the jokes is just "Poultrygeist". I have no idea where that's going but I'm here for it.

This content isn't what you're supposed to create. It doesn’t fit the standard prompts. But it brings me so much joy. It could be nonsense but it’s still someone sharing their experience. This is all to say, I hope my nonsense content brings you the same amount of joy.

I'll be channeling my inner 💩🤖 and 🐓👻 this week. See you next week!

P.S Here's a shortlist of some of my fav helpful newsletters. Go subscribe to them if you haven’t!

P.P.S Send me your most random content. I would love to read / watch it!