People and Blogs: Cassidy Williams

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

I'm Cassidy, I live in Chicago and love building things! I started coding after I had a chance encounter with a neighbor when I walked home from school in 8th grade. I heard them say, "check out my website," and I didn't realize you could have your own website. From there I just scoured the internet teaching myself everything I could about making them! I went on to study computer science at Iowa State University, got deep into the hackathon scene, lived in Spain, in the Bay Area, in NYC, and in Seattle, and tried out a bunch of jobs at mostly startups, with some larger companies in between. I love teaching and making things for fun and utility!

What's the story behind your blog?

I've been blogging on and off for almost 20 years. My current blog doesn't actually have all of my writing in it (yet?) because sometimes it's on my own domains, sometimes for companies, sometimes just out in the open. I get a lot of value from writing things I learn (because I often run into problems again, I've run into my own blog posts while debugging something multiple times), and so I try to do it regularly in case it might be able to help someone else, as well.

On my newsletter side, I started it in 2017 as a way to more consistently write and share. It's turned into probably my most important project I've taken on in my career, with several thousand subscribers and an issue that comes out every week!

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

I usually write pretty off-the-cuff, and usually in Obsidian, my note taking tool. I've actually written about my trying out TinaCMS and how I publish from Obsidian, as well! I also have a note of blog ideas if I want to write something but I'm not sure how to get started.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I do think that physical space can influence you, and I love writing under a blanket on the couch, ha! That being said, I think people can be creative anywhere.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

My day-to-day involves a lot of coding, meetings, and general writing. I use:

• VS Code (I still use vim on occasion to maintain my street cred, but VS Code does what I need for most things)
• Obsidian (for all note-taking and writing and blogging and remembering things)
• Raindrop (for bookmarks and saving things to read)
• todometer (for task tracking)
• Sukha (for "flow state" work)
• Dabble.me (for journaling)
• Buttondown (for my newsletter)

I host my blog on Netlify, and it's an Astro website, and it's open source

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

Hmm, sometimes I wish I used something like Wordpress where I just write and don't think about how my blog is built. But at the same time, I like being able to control easily all parts of my website and really own it!

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

My blog costs about $180 a year for the domain, analytics, and hosting. My newsletter on top of that brings it up more, because that costs about $140 a month. Luckily my newsletter brings in some sponsorship money to offset the costs though. I say that if someone can make money with the content they make, more power to them!

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

Eleanor Konik writes truly fascinating things.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

I'd love to share:

• My newsletter: cassidoo.co/newsletter
• My blog: blog.cassidoo.co
• My word game Jumblie
• My team's app Brainstory (which I also use to help fix writer's block!)