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Jeff Burroughs
Jeff Burroughs

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Getting Started Blogging

I recently started a new job and have been working hard at learning some new JS frameworks. I started a project after taking some classes and wanted to start writing blog posts about the experience. The thing that I found was that getting started with the first blog post was difficult. I ran into stumbling blocks along the way and that has prevented me from reaching my goal. I'd like to share those stumbling blocks and what I did to get past them here.

Getting started with what I imagined my first blog post would be didn't seem very difficult at the time. I started by documenting the steps I took and before I knew it I had a whole list of steps on how to repeat what I had done. A blog post this was not. I read over the steps multiple times and thought to myself that this would get someone to the same point I currently was, but didn't include any actual information about why I chose the route I did. I also realized that the list of steps would quickly become outdated and then it would be less useful to the reader.

A decision needed to be made. I needed to expand on the information I was providing and I was uncertain about how to move forward. It felt so overwhelmed that I gave up. This was the end of my first attempt at blogging about my learning experience and it had ended almost as quickly as it had started.

One issue I encountered here was that I had the expectation that I could just sit down and instantly be a tech blogger. This assumption was so totally not correct. As a coworker mentioned today these things take practice. This issue is being worked on by writing this blog post! It is the beginning of my practice. Hopefully with time I will get better at the process.

Another issue I noticed after my session with my coworker was that I needed to have some thoughts about what it was that I intended to convey. In my first shot at this, I thought the only thing that was important was documenting the steps I took. While this could have some use, I think it's the why behind the steps that is equally if not more important. I needed to spend a little time on what I wanted my post's message to be. This was something I put some time into today with this post. The idea here is not just to document that the process was hard and oh noes I quit and can't move forward. It was also to document the issues and to provide a story about how I learned from the process and what I can do to make things better for the next round.

So, I will end this post here. The issues have been overcome and I have a post now. Coming soon will be posts on how I went about creating my latest project.

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