311–320 of 373 posts
I blog because once a post of mine made the front page of HN and you guys crashed my VPS with traffic for 2 days straight - including my work site hosted on the same server. I will cherish that moment of excitement and terror for the rest of my days
I blog because once a post of mine made the front page of HN and you guys crashed my VPS with traffic for 2 days straight - including my work site hosted on the same server. I will cherish that moment of excitement and terror for the rest of my days
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I write differently when I anticipate an audience (even if they never come). Is that good, though? If the product is purely for self-consumption, is the audience-anticipating version necessarily the better version? And at what point, after how many unread blog posts, do you rationally stop anticipating an audience?
Usually it's a good thing, yes. Because you are forced to communicate clearly, cut the jargon and not dump your stream of consciousness. Instead you pay attention to whether what you're saying is of any value to another person.
Why is that good, though, if you're the only reader?
I have tried many times to start a blog. I usually manage to eek out one or two articles before getting utterly stuck. I have lots of things I want to write about but I feel completely anxious about putting my ideas out there, even got relatively simple, straightforward things. How do you push through the anxiety and actually put things out there?
Lay out your main topic and your initial thoughts. Let it do the anxiety-inducing part.
You just need a starting ground.
Artists who fear the “blank canvas” use a similar strategy - make large, loose brush strokes and create from chaos.
I still believe in blogging. For anyone keen on getting started or switch providers, I recenly launched a no-nonsense service: https://LMNO.lol . The experience feels more like taking notes than blogging (low friction). My blog is https://lmno.lol/alvaro (also at https://xenodium.com )
I like your 'fortune cookie' that provides a username for frictionless onboarding!
I document technical things on my blog and hardly anyone reads it. But later on when I need that thing again, I just go there and I have the perfect documentation available for the topic (it's perfect since I wrote it hahaha).
I used to do that, now I just keep a OneNote with the things that would have been blog entries once upon a time - it's available across all my devices and I can export it to PDF when I do need to share something with someone - and I don't have to worry about someone defacing or hacking the site hosting it.
It happened to me a few times that I forgot I wrote something down, only to find it via google search.
The author very clearly states that the reason is the Buddhist "carry water, chop wood": you do it because it needs doing. You do it because you saw something. You do it for yourself.
Yet a lot of the comments here are more of a utilitarian bent, e.g. "one day someone will see it", "it's for networking", "it's proof you know your stuff", etc. Completely unrelated and maybe even contrary to the meaning of this article/blog post!
I didn't take the C-19 vaccine. I don't remember exactly why. For that I have a blog post I can go to and refresh my memory.
My blog is my journal, but in a fancy format which makes it harder to be forgotten in a park or in a bus trip.