Newsletter #0

Hi everyone! 👋

Welcome to edition #0 of my newsletter.

I originally had a link to my newsletter as far back as 2020 on my blog emgoto.com - so for those who have been subscribed since then, hi! Sorry for taking so long to actually publish something, and I hope you stick around.

My initial aim was to kick this off in January of 2025, but as I started to think about what to write, I thought that doing a bit of an introductory newsletter would be a good idea.

So a little bit about me - I was born and raised in Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺.

I was very introverted as a kid. Loved books, played a lot of video games, and went on long walks outside with my dog who I absolutely adored (RIP to my lil buddy). My interest in video games and earning $$ led me to study computer science at university, and I got a job as a front-end software engineer when I graduated. I’ve now been with that same company for 7 years now, which is crazy to think about.

I recently moved to Japan in 2022. 🇯🇵 It had been a long-term dream of mine to try living there. I always enjoyed visiting Japan on summer holidays as a child, and being half-Japanese I wanted to properly experience the other half of my identity too. It helps that the food is amazing, and there is just so much to do.

I knew that Japan as a holiday destination could be quite different to actually living there full time, so I kind of went in with a “I’ll try it out, and if I don’t like it, I’ll go back to Australia” kind of mentality. I’ve ended up really loving it, and don’t really have any plans on leaving.

With the whirlwind that is moving to a new country, trying out new hobbies like airsoft and making new friends, I did end up having a 2-year break from programming outside of work (and really, being online in general). In the process, I went from someone that was very much “I hate sports and I love staying indoors and playing video games” to someone that was always outside and hiking every single weekend. It was quite a drastic identity shift.

Now I’m trying to dial back a bit on the hiking a bit (I got pretty obsessive) but instead I’m finding myself sliding into a blogging obsession, and have been getting pretty into writing new blog posts (about hikes, mostly) and making small UI and functionality tweaks here and there to my blog. I really do find it hard to strike a balance. 😅

The hiking and programming sections of my blog are getting to be in a state I’m pretty happy with. I’ve even started experimenting with rendering maps to show the location of mountains. The book section is still a bit of a mess - I’m not really sure what I want to do with it yet. But I really do like the idea of having this little corner on the internet to myself where I can do whatever the heck I want.

So I’m keen to see where this blog takes me! And I hope you stick around for the ride.

If you have any questions or suggestions on what I should write next, please do feel free to reply to this newsletter or reach out on Bluesky or Instagram!