I started blogging a year ago. I had considered blogging for many years previously, but held back for a variety of reasons. I was overwhelmed with so many of the decisions that went into building a blog:
- How often would I blog?
- What would I blog about?
- What static pages would I put up?
- Should I split my blog up into multiple micro blogs based on each cluster of topics?
- Should the blog be public or private?
- Should I advertise my consulting services, if I ever decided to offer them?
- Should I incorporate my old technical blog?
- What domain should I use?
- What URL path should I use for posts?
- Should there be comments?
- Should I also make social media accounts to promote the blog?
- What blogging platform should I use?
Ultimately none of these questions really mattered though. The truth was that I was allowing myself to endlessly ponder these pointless details because I was not ready to share my thoughts. However, in the early summer of 2014 I had finally gotten over those reservations and was ready to let the world peek into my mind. Instead of being crushed with the burden of all those decisions about how the blog would be I decided to simply write whatever was on my mind and nothing else. No styling, no promotion, no comments, no static pages - just my thoughts. I committed to writing a post every Monday and Thursday, hosting the blog on my own domain that had been sitting dormant for years, and decided to use the Ghost publishing platform since it was the simplest.
The first few posts where really hard. I was a bit weary of publishing so much personal information, and also nervous about sharing my ideas with complete strangers. Every time Monday or Thursday came around I also was in a constant scramble of what to write about. I had my brother proof read the first handful of posts and really deferred to his excellent editorial judgement when it came to things like sentence composition, tone, and the voice used. I was pretty exhilarated when I hit publish those first few times, and would tell some close friends and family that they had to check out my awesome new post.
After a while I started publishing posts without my brothers help. I also was able to start thinking about what I would blog about during the week so that I didn’t have to scramble at the last minute. As time went on blogging became easier, and is now an ingrained habit. I was able to stick to my Monday and Thursday schedule, which I’m very proud of. Throughout the past year I’ve been able to hone my writing skills, dive deep into making coherent arguments, and come to some new insights though the process of writing. I still haven’t gotten around to making any of those decisions that had initially paralyzed me, but at this point I don’t really care - I’m just happy that I’m writing.
The reason that I blog is to both share my thoughts in the spirit of public intellectualism, and also as a constant reminder that I am writing my own life story, so I better make it a good one a good one. I can’t really claim that my thoughts have sparked a lot of debate or had a large impact at this point - but perhaps as time goes on this may occur. However, I can say without a doubt that starting to write was a great decision. It’s made me more reflective as a person, challenged me to think harder, and encouraged me to live life more fully. I’m going to continue blogging, and am looking forward to writing many more words in the future.