First month of blogging accomplished

I know it's already more than a month but I still should share my experience of the first month of blogging. It happened to be a really great activity with lots of benefits.


Blogging is not something new, I've started among many with a post about Skype chat history. It happened to be a great success. Still nowadays I've got notifications that people coule fire up the VBScript and save their chat history. Even if it's really unprofessional and lame there is a use of it. And people care about that, they also eat from McDonalds so nothing should be judged really.

But that was a different experience for me. I wrote posts weekly, monthly or only couple of times a year. When expectations are high and you're waiting for the right moment, the perfect topic and the decent background knowledge you really have to regulate yourself. For me it didn't work. My activity went down to zero. And at some point I realized I don't want to write anymore. Not only because it's stressing but having certain amount of OCD you want to maintain patterns no matter what kind are they.

This time I made a commitment. I've done so many things in the last years and this was the right moment to try something now. My expectation can be read in the kick-off post. Let's dissect some of them.

Blogging helps me big time to stay in a nice mental state. It creates a communication channel - blogging daily is super effective to not let this channel fade away. For me it's essential, I simply don't have time to hide and do nothing. It also makes me a purpose. I owe my readers to provide something when they honored me with their attention. It's a win-win game. Investing energy wasn't a real problem so far. At the moment I just came home after midnight from a 70's rollerblade party, dead tired, bit still motivated to write about something.

Then grammar. I've got very nice compliments about the language and text. It's far from perfect but practicing is always increasing these skills. I can try so many things by writing so much. And I've got many reports about mistakes which I was happy to correct.

The way I'm learning new things is also changed. Having a blog post force you to provide information you wouldn't lookup otherwise. It doesn't take too much time but easy to forget when you learn for yourself only. You won't slap yourself too often. Others will ;)

Increasing the number of visitors also worked. I had a constant daily visits around 20-30. Nowadays it's 60-80. There are peaks of course for popular posts, some reached almost 300 readers. But I really want to state clear - I'm not blogging to get lot's of visitors. Not gonna fall to that again.

Self-exploration another thing which I'm really grateful. In the book Ikigai Sebastian Marshall explains how important to constantly re-evaluate yourself and your goals. For me writing is a fast-lane to do that. Seeing what I like to write and what kind are they made me realize what I can add to the community. Also - at this moment I think that this blog is a "DIY technologist" blog. Myself as a developer-tech enthusiastic I'm facing with so many problems that I have to do either myself of with the help of somebody. By experiencing all the things I've done I can share it and make other people's life easier. It's still something to help young people to grow. Well - try to say me I'm old and I write about prostate problems I swear.

Last but not least blogging generated me so many conversations - and I think that's what makes me so happy and encourage to keep on writing. Sometimes really the important thing is the state of mind. The way you interpret things will effect on your performance and the outcome. I wish I'd known that before - but still satisfied that I realized it know. Not just here, also at taking presentations, handling projects, caring about your team. You need to love everything. Without it you just finish and go home.

The less important lessons I've learned: some images are rerouted to an electrified disgusting cat sometimes. Don't ask why. Some images are really require mentioning the author. Blogspot is not for professional blogging. But there is a workaround. And finally: ridiculously high percentage of visitors come from http://superuser.com/. Again - don't ask why.

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Let me thank you for reading my posts. That is an honor, really.

Peter