I have been wanting to write a blog since I first started following tech blogs when I was a freshman in college. Over the years I have started and stopped many times, I have created a WordPress website, purchased a domain, made a posting schedule, paid for hosting, but I never did any actual writing.
Part of my issue is I see writing as a chore … I don’t like doing it. The dislike stems from not doing non-technical writing outside of the classroom. To me writing is akin to a university essay assignment. Study a topic, develop a thesis, write a draft, get feedback, write a final draft, and upload the PDF to the virtual dropbox. A couple of weeks later a grade is posted. How many times did you review the feedback from a graded assignment and update it?
To overcome this mental roadblock I need to change my mind set. I want to become a better writer and improve expressing both my technical and non-technical thoughts. My mindset of looking at blogging as an assignment needs to stop. Instead I need to start looking at blogging like coding.
My Heroku account contains half completed apps and only a few apps are in a stable live state, why? Because once I learned what I wanted to learn I stopped, other priorities came up in life, another project grew faster, or I lost my inspiration for the app. Are those personal projects a waste of time? NO! Why? Because I learned something, coding doesn’t mean everything you code is going to make it into a prod environment, but everything you code does add to your knowledge and skills.
Writing is the same way. Everything I write is not going to make it to this blog, heck half the paragraphs I wrote didn’t make it to this post. This acceptance is motivating me to start somewhere and start writing.
In a year from now, I am curious what I am going to think about my blog. Will I realize how choppy the writing is? Will I notice a grammar mistake? Or will I look at it like I look at my Heroku Apps? Everything I did and did not post added to my knowledge and skills and I am better because of it.