Az

Blogging

Personal Blogging

I think I want to start blogging more.

I’m keeping up the post-a-month so far, but as I’ve started using a private journal more often I’m becoming more tempted to start turning some of those entries into blogs or start writing on more of my thoughts and experiences on this platform.

My main worry is that I’ll end up only posting when I’m affected by negative emotions and end up with a whiny, sappy blog (as has happened repeatedly in the past), but I think if I set myself to a forced, regular cadence of blogging and write on more varied topics I might be able to avoid that. I also like the idea of being able to go back over my blogs and watch my growth as a person, which is definitely evident when viewing archives of my previous blogs.

Of course, a few questions are raised:

  • Do I censor certain aspects of my life and thus risk presenting an inauthentic view of myself?
  • What is an appropriate blogging regime to keep regularity but avoid burnout?
  • What format should my blogs be (diaries, thoughts, opinions)?
  • Do I keep them in this feed and risk diluting my other content?

If this becomes a regular thing I’ll probably need to invest some time and energy in setting up an automated CI/CD pipeline to build and upload this site because it’s already becoming more of a pain in the arse doing it manually.

Technical Blogging

Of course, the above only refers to the personal aspects of my blogging adventures, on the technical side (my dev/ops blogs) I also want to become more prolific in my writings. Even if I keep myself to one a month for now, I’d like to increase that later but I’m very worried about not having enough topic material to write about.

I think to overcome this I’m going to need to start another regime, one of reading technical books (rather than occasional articles/blogs) in order to get back on a learning journey. Maybe this can be a goal from May onwards (with a headstart in April), to dive back into learning to program and build systems.

I feel this would not only help me progress and grow as a developer, but keep me abreast of current trends and further my specialist knowledge to help with my role as a manager.