Why I Blog
craigkerstiens.com
Why I Blog
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Why I Blog
#2Great to see someone writing this as a structured thought. Thank you!
I would add one thing that someone recently said to me and I felt it was the core reason of why I write blog-style docs (for my team or the general internet populace): "These are notes to myself so I can structure learnings and not repeat my own mistakes."
Similar to your thought on "Distilling information" but a bit of a nuance that I think is worth highlighting.
Re: Why I Blog
#3Thank you for the writeup, this will encourage me to blog. I have some domain names stored away, but it's been hard tackling those on right now, Shodan is sending me ssl expiration notices on the blogs I mantain for instance. I like the part about being replaceable particularly as I have not thought about that angle before, but I guess it comes down to the bus factor somewhat as well.
Re: Why I Blog
#4Because you can't code.
Re: Why I Blog
#5I blog to clear my head. Usually at the point I write a blog posts it’s because I’ve had something on my mind and I know I won’t stop thinking about it until I write it down.
It works too. Sometimes other people even read it.
Re: Why I Blog
#6Desire to become replaceable in order to continue working on new things is a refreshing take. It is a more positive, and imo, more realistic outlook than the usual one, which is more like, _I will be replaced and no longer be valuable/needed_.
Re: Why I Blog
#7Similar to the benefits I've found of actually committing to a blog for the past... 8 years. Wow.
The major benefits I've found:
- I can "flush from active storage" anything I've written as a blog post. I know myself well enough to trust that anything weird, non-intuitive, or otherwise "would be helpful for doing this again in the future" will be documented in the post - so I can genuinely just forget everything about the project after I've written it up.
- It encourages me to actually finish projects. I had a problem with a lot of "85% done" things, and it was both physical and mental clutter. They need to be finished to write about them, so I both get them finished and documented - freeing up both physical and mental space.
- If I want to respond to something in a longer, more thought out form, I can. I've done this over the years, though it's less useful than it used to be - responding to the 500th time someone asks the same question with a link to your blog is now considered "self promotion" and therefore banned on lots of places I no longer bother with on the internet.
- I occasionally get down weird rabbit holes and have months of post material from something that I simply can't find much information on. LED lighting (blue light, human health, sleep, etc), kerosene lanterns (beautiful, useful, and good winter heat in the deal), and an 11k word epic on lead acid batteries that should have been a few posts.
I'll just say, having learned the hard way, own your hosting and pipeline. I tend to write on a lot of "gutless wonder" grade machines, and after Blogger ruined their interface for anyone without a Google-grade workstation, I ended up moving to my own hosting and Jekyll for rendering. It's now possible for me to move my (static file) hosting just about anywhere, and I'm not reliant on other people to not break that which I rely on. Don't suffer the pain of using someone else's platform, and learning in a few years that you have to migrate off. It's much easier to just use your own, and if you want to refactor things later, well, you just do it.
Re: Why I Blog
#8My own reasons for blogging:
- Know what I think. Writing it down makes me think a lot more about it.
- Share what I have learnt. It's nice if something I know becomes useful for somebody else.
- Venting. From time to time there are things that annoy me, or ways of working that I don’t like. Then I can write a blog post and argue how things should be instead.
- To learn. Often comments on the posts, or discussions here or at Reddit add to my understanding.
- To better remember. Reviewing a book or a course helps me remember a lot more of the content.
- The thrill of having readers
- Visibility. If people google me, hopefully the top result is my blog.
- As an archive. I can send people links to my blog if we discuss something I have written about in the past.
https://henrikwarne.com/2017/11/26/6-years-of-thoughts-on-pr...
Re: Why I Blog
#9On a slight tangent, I love reading the first posts of a blog. Especially when the subsequent posts are about the person building or designing said blog. It it’s really hard to find those kinds of posts or blogs. All the results on google are blog spam articles about making money with a blog.
Can anyone recommend some?
Here’s one of my favourite examples.
Re: Why I Blog
#10In addition to the positives already outlined the two biggest gains for me blogging are
* Producing better documentation in a work capacity (that is, blogging has meant that the documentation that i produce at work has greatly improved).
* Providing an outlet for me to "talk" about the things, in detail, that I have fallen in love with.