Reflective Practice
On building a record before a narrative
Why this site begins with structure, dates and sources rather than a finished story
A note on how this site is assembled, and why the record comes before the interpretation.
Most personal websites begin with a conclusion. Someone decides what they are, writes it at the top of the page in large type, and arranges everything underneath to support it. The result reads cleanly and tells you very little.
This site begins somewhere else: with a record. Dates, roles, settings, documents, things that were tried, things that did not work, and things that were understood only much later. The interpretation can come afterwards, and it can change.
Why the order matters
A record can be checked. A narrative can only be believed or doubted. When someone is doing genuine due diligence — a school, a research group, a journalist, a potential collaborator — what they need is the checkable part.
It also protects against a common distortion. Looking back, it is very easy to describe a working life as though its direction was obvious from the beginning. It rarely was. Showing the actual sequence, including the detours, is more useful than presenting an inevitability that never existed.
What this means in practice
Throughout this site, statements are separated by kind. Something observed in practice is marked differently from something proposed, and both are marked differently from something learned in hindsight.
Material is published once it can be traced to a source. That means some parts of the record arrive later than others — an incomplete record that is accurate is worth more than a complete one that is not.
References
No external references are cited in this piece.