108 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
108 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
+++
|
|
date = "2014-04-03"
|
|
title = "To Blog or Not To Blog"
|
|
tags = ["writing"]
|
|
description = "My last post was 154 days ago. That's about five months and no posts in the year 2014. I have been wondering why I haven't written any postslately and this is what I discovered."
|
|
slug = "to-blog-or-not-to-blog"
|
|
+++
|
|
<img src="/img/20140403-01.jpg" class="center bordered" />
|
|
|
|
My last post was 154 days ago. That's about five months without writing a
|
|
single post on this blog. I've been thinking about what this means and
|
|
what happened, and here is what I discovered.
|
|
|
|
First of all I love writing. It has something peaceful to write down your
|
|
experiences and thoughts. I also love that I can share these experiences
|
|
with you, like 90.000 times each month, if I'm to believe analytics.
|
|
|
|
But I didn't write. I barely looked at my site and only once a month
|
|
got reminded about it when the ad revenue email came in.
|
|
|
|
Finding _where it had gone wrong_ has not been a high priority for me either.
|
|
I'm not sure why or how. Recently I came across the
|
|
[A No-Excuses Guide to Blogging][1] summary, which neatly lists all kinds of
|
|
excuses to _not blog_ and what to do about them.
|
|
|
|
This got me thinking about why I hadn't posted a blog in such a long time.
|
|
|
|
<img src="/img/20140403-02.png" class="center bordered" />
|
|
|
|
I have been up to quite a lot lately, but still I struggled to write blog
|
|
posts. From the _A No-Excuses Guide to Blogging_ I picked up several tips
|
|
that got me going again.
|
|
|
|
The three most important tips I got from _A No-Excuses Guide to Bloggin_ were
|
|
these:
|
|
|
|
## 1. Write about what you're learning, while you learn.
|
|
|
|
I'm learning constantly. If it's not using Vim more proficiently, then it's
|
|
about setting up servers with some shell script magic. Finding new tools
|
|
to pair program, or write better tests.
|
|
|
|
Often I found myself not worthy of writing a post about a topic, like Bitcoin,
|
|
GPG or Vagrant and chef because I don't feel at the top of my game on these
|
|
subjects. I'm no expert. I don't want to look like a fool writing non-sense
|
|
about these topics.
|
|
|
|
But I'm learning. I don't have to be an expert to talk about what I
|
|
_discovered_ or _learned_. I can even ask questions and leave them
|
|
unanswered in my posts, and who knows someone might find an answer.
|
|
|
|
## 2. Keep a list of topics and create focus
|
|
|
|
The seconds problem I had was the volatility of my ideas. I often had a
|
|
great idea at night when learning or programming. The next day those ideas
|
|
were mostly gone and forgotten.
|
|
|
|
Now, I'm keeping track of what I'm doing more actively using Evernote. This
|
|
way I can later recall what I did and what that great idea for a blog post
|
|
was all about.
|
|
|
|
When I started doing this, the list with ideas grew quickly. Too quickly.
|
|
The list became quite long and I had no idea where to start or how to get
|
|
any writing done.
|
|
|
|
Focussing on what's most important sounds easy. But what is most important?
|
|
What is most important _to me_? It turns out that there are subjects that
|
|
get me excited and happy. There is no clear box to put these ideas. Some
|
|
ideas are very techincal, others are more security or privacy oriented
|
|
while other are not technical at all (like this post).
|
|
|
|
Optimizing for my own happiness was big factor in getting back to writing
|
|
for this blog again.
|
|
|
|
## 3. Make sharing part of the way you work
|
|
|
|
It may be hard to believe but sharing was never a part of my daily
|
|
workflow. And I honestly don't know why it wasn't.
|
|
|
|
Sharing comes naturally to me. When I've figured something out I want to
|
|
talk to people about it. And more often than not they get excited as well.
|
|
|
|
Wouldn't it be great if I could make this sharing a part of my daily
|
|
workflow? I'm still experimenting with this (as I have to write a few new
|
|
posts) but I think this will be a great motivator to keep writing.
|
|
|
|
## To Blog or Not To Blog
|
|
|
|
After reading [A No-Excuses Guide to Blogging][1] I got excited again about
|
|
my blog and writing. I've taken away a few tips from this guide that,
|
|
hopefully, will keep me interested and focus on writing what I care about.
|
|
|
|
* Keep a list of ideas
|
|
* Keep notes when learning or trying new things
|
|
* Technology doesn't matter
|
|
* Focus on what makes you happy and excited
|
|
* Make sharing part of your workflow
|
|
|
|
With a fresh list of ideas for my blog I'm ready to start writing some blog
|
|
posts again!
|
|
|
|
_If you are a blogger and having some _"issues"_, make sure to read
|
|
[A No-Excuses Guide to Blogging][1] by Sasha Chua._
|
|
|
|
[1]: http://sach.ac/no-excuses-blogging
|
|
|
|
|