Writing Again

I was looking at my site the other day and realised that I've managed to write quite a few blog posts in the past 10 years. I was really proud of writing 30+ articles in 2021 alone when I challenged myself to write more. However, looking at my the site markdown files, it dawned on me that I've only managed to add 2 more to this site since 2022 and I was a bit disappointed in myself.

But as everyone who has a partner or family knows, there's always a lot to deal with in real life.

Life challenges

Over the past few years I've been helping two teenage children to grow and thrive into young adults. This isn't always easy as they navigate growing up and the challenges of school, college, work, and their own relationships. My wife and I have had to become partial carers for my mum who sadly suffered from a stroke back in 2022. It's hard for her now that she's lost a lot of independence so we help by doing the shopping, washing, cooking, and taking her to the many medical appointments. And then in May 2024, I was, yet again, laid off from my tech job at Netlify after working there for 2 years. I had to spend a few months trying to find another role in a difficult market and that puts a lot of pressure on life. So I'm sure you can understand that that blogging wasn't top of mind for me.

Social media sucks

I used to post a lot on social media but my behaviour has changed over the past few years. Twitter has become a bit of a cesspool after Elmo took over so I've not felt as comfortable sharing my thoughts there. Facebook now mostly serves posts from groups you're not part of rather than showing updates from your friends and it is also now allowing even more misinformation and hate speech due to the change in their policies. I found myself using Bluesky a little but more recently as it has been making strides to become a nice place to share your thoughts with the world. But as the world of media changes, I do feel like I need to keep my own little place on the internet and so I want to start posting a bit more on here again.

Writing for myself again

I always felt like I had to have big ideas to write about and that my posts should be really insightful and more long-form in length. But I've also read lots of great blog posts that are just a few paragraphs long and are often just someone sharing their thoughts and ideas. I have tried to start writing again a few times but I find myself paralysed by the thought that people would judge what I've written or I'm not knowledgeable enough to write on certain subjects. Thanks imposter syndrome!

I've come to realise that I should just write for myself and if people read it, then that's a bonus. ❤️

I really should read my own blog and create a writing habit!

Inspiration for writing more

I've also been inspired by a few blog posts that I've read recently.

My old Netlify colleague Den Delimarsky wrote a great post about being a property owner and not a renter on the internet. He's writing a great post eschewing social media platforms and ensuring that we all help to build our own little homes on the internet where platform owners can't pull the rug from under us.

The ever-brilliant Simon Willison has written lots about blogging on his site. I don't know how he manages to publish multiple blog posts per day but he has some great advice on his post called what to blog about. He suggests writing more "today I learned" (TIL) posts about the challenges you encounter and how you fixed them. He also says you should write more about any projects you're working on so it's time to actually work on some more projects in the first place!

This post from Danny Guo called "Why I blog" makes some really great points on why you should blog. I love that writing helps to clarify your thinking as you have to write something down and make it coherent.

There's also the classic post by Jeff Atwood on how to achieve ultimate blog success from way back in 2007 which is still really relevant today.

Finally, I'm always inspired by my friend Sam Rose who has got some brilliant long-form articles on computer science topics on his wonderful blog. You should really check this out if you haven't already as he writes incredible articles on complex computer science topics and includes his own wonderful visualisations. His posts are really engaging and he writes so anyone can understand them.

What's next?

So 2025 will be a year where I post more regularly and don't worry about what others think. Everything will continue to be syndicated via my RSS feed so if you're still an old-school RSS reader like me, you can get all of my posts there.

I'm also planning on making more music under my DJ Cruze moniker. I might even publish some videos or live-streams of me making the music too so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Continue to be excellent to each other and see you online soon!