Blogging: A Review

It's the start of a new year (relatively), so here we are with a new blog. My on-and-off relationship with blogging is so old at this point that it has its own driver's license.

I started with LiveJournal near the end of high school through the insistence of a friend. I thought I was supposed to write about myself, but untold to me, you were supposed to ship your favourite Harry Potter characters. It was okay though because I had no sense of self and had never experienced an individual, independent thought yet. I had no material to write about.

Near the end of University and several years into my working life, I ran my blog on Blogspot. I set a goal to write one post every month, a bar that was never met. For some reason, this blog felt serious. I had opinions and I wanted everyone to know it. However, with having to collect and formulate my thoughts, the speed at which I could form coherent sentences, I was only able to write approximately one paragraph an hour. And when you graduate and you start making money, it is difficult to commit an entire evening to writing when you could be out with friends. This blog ran for a number of years, with a couple dozen posts that I was quite proud of (and some less so) but I did give it up.

At work, management invited an Agile coach for training sessions. I took the opportunity to have dinner with him and he sold me on the importance of creating my own brand. So my next couple blogs were more an experiment in buying domains and integrating with different blogging platforms more than writing anything significant. I used Write.as, Ghost(Pro) and self-hosted Ghost via Digital Ocean. None of these experiences are worth writing about. Write.as wiped out the few posts I wrote accidentally. Ghost(Pro) was too expensive for a blog that I rarely updated and no one ever read. Self-hosting Ghost was a reminder why I work in application development and not infrastructure.

So here we are, again. Why do I even keep trying? I found that when I force myself to write down the ideas and feelings that are floating around in my head, I have to consciously and actively think them through. By the time words are written into sentences, collated into paragraphs and organized into a post, you have completely worked through and straightened everything out in your head and your heart. Negative emotions can be put behind you. Positive emotions have been shouted out at the highest mountain. You can move on with your life.

So, do I recommend blogging in 2024? Yeah, do it. Do it even if your consistency is trash. Do it even if you do not own your own domain, or even a computer. Write it down on a piece of paper and throw it out the window. But just do it and help yourself keep moving forward.