I’m writing this blog post from Emacs. I’ve tried this many times before, but I’m trying again. Not because I really want to, but because my pride has been challenged.

A friend on Discord hates openSUSE. And he knows I hate Emacs. So somewhere we started talking trash, and now he’s using openSUSE and I’m using Emacs. The first person to quit, fails the challenge and has to pay the price of humiliation. I’ve been at it now for a few days, and I have a secret to share.

I am having fun.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Emacs is horrible and VIM is way better. But, I’ve had fun trying to figure out how I need to go about setting Emacs up the way I want it to be. Bit by bit, I’m building my own little Emacs config file, and I’ve had a blast. I’m a nerd, so this isn’t that surprising. I like nerding out and configuring things to suit my needs. Emacs is really no different than anything else I’ve learned over the years. But somehow, I had built it up into this horrendously difficult thing. It’s really not. Things are different, but all the knowledge about how to do things is out there just waiting for me to Google it.

Over the last few days, I’ve set up WhichKey, Dired, Dashboard and a few other things. Each step has led me to a nice little feeling of success. Some of that is knowing that my friend on Discord has no chance of winning our bet. Something will go wrong for him or a package won’t be available, and he’ll have to leave openSUSE behind. He hasn’t stayed on a single distro for more than a few months the entire time I’ve known him.

Some of the good vibes, however, come from just learning something new. I’ve tried Emacs before, but I always used something like DOOM. What I didn’t see is that by using what basically amounts to someone else’s config, I was handicapping myself and preventing myself from learning what I needed to learn to be successful.

Now, will all this lead to me liking Emacs? pfft Nope. Not a chance. I may have more knowledge about it, but really, I’ll always be a VIM guy, no matter how this time on Emacs goes.

This is day 4 of Blaugust 2025.