Oh hai! đ
I was trying to take a leap into creating an online presence many times in my life. Yet there was always something⢠that prevented me from doing so. Recently my manager told me to write a blog post about the team Iâm leading, to share the culture and teamâs mission with the outside world. Shameless plug alert: you can read it here.
That piece took me two days to write (and two weeks to publish, 90-90 rule applies everywhere) and I was thrilled by the outcome. Turned out itâs not that hard, it does not bite and more importantly - it's fun! So I connected all the dots and asked myself a very important question - why havenât I done this before, despite having dozens of topics I collected over the time?
One thing led to another and here I am. Because what would be more beneficial for me and the others than writing my first personal post describing things that always stood in my way, right? I hope youâll find them useful, so you wonât wait that long to take the first step.
1. âIt was already described X timesâ
#1 excuse. Canât count how many times I told this shit to myself. The answer here is, in fact, pretty simple, quoting James Hetfield:
After all these years I realised it doesnât mean anything. It was always tempting to write only about stuff no one else wrote before, but it's nearly impossible to achieve in the long run (unless youâre working on a super-secret military tech you probably should not speak publicly about).
My recipe now is: donât overthink it, write it down in private, look for typos the next day or give it to your close one for feedback and finally click the damn âPublishâ button. Boom! Itâs time for a high five.
The thing is - there are thousands of similar articles on the Internet, and yet more and more are being created on a daily basis by people like me and you. So share your unique journey with your own words and use that as an advantage by adding that additional ingredient to all your publications.
2. âWho am I to talk about it?â
<Quote text="So what?" />
If youâd have to be an expert in something to explain it or write about it then we would have VERY little things to read here. But what does it even mean to be an expert? Does it require 10+ years of experience? Or do you need to have a documented 100k LOC contributed to Open Source projects? Or maybe thereâs a mysterious exam provided by a mysterious expert committee that gives you the expert badge when you pass it? I achieved none of them and yet youâre reading this.
The ultimate mindset you should have here is that you are primarily doing it for yourself and the others benefiting from it will be just a great side effect. In fact - the earlier you start the better, because youâll have a chance to learn in public, by sharing what you have done with others. And that will benefit both sides - yours, because youâll solidify your learnings and will have a chance to get some feedback and others, because they will have a chance to read things explained simply, by someone like them.
3. âItâs not the right timeâ
This one is tricky but bear with me here. There are times doing anything productive in general will be nearly impossible. You can have a bad day at work, or a tough time in your life - everyone has those, and thatâs totally fine. Take your time, get yourself up and recover.
Iâm not talking about these kinds of situations, Iâm targeting the âIâll start going to the gym by tomorrowâ kind of one. Donât fall for that. I fooled myself that I'll start something next Monday, next month or ultimately on January 1st (because that always works đ) and it was never successful in the long term. So donât bother yourself with any mental scheduling, just write something down for yourself and go public whenever you feel your piece of text is finished.
4. âWhat if no one finds it useful?â
The Internet is a very large place. Over 4.5 bln people use it (according to this page). People used to warn their children about putting stuff here because âeverything you put on the Internet stays there foreverâ. And while itâs not entirely true (just find any old forum and try to open some images hosted on https://imageshack.us) I guarantee you that if you put your work on any of those big blogging platforms there will be someone willing to read your work.
Will it be thousands view right from the start? Unlikely. Thatâs why the âIâm doing it for myselfâ is so important as thereâs a solid chance youâll be the only person who will read all of your posts. But it is reasonable to expect things to get better over time, some articles will hit the front page, some will go viral and even if not - your writing portfolio will be a great proof of your skills while applying for the next job.
5. âBut what if I ran out of topics?â
Oh no, you wonât. I came up with at least 5 ideas since I published my first blog post 2 weeks ago. It just comes naturally. Look at your codebase, your current or past projects and youâll definitely find inspiration.
And for yâall shy senior+ developers out there - your experience matters and itâs definitely worth sharing. Thereâs a particular added value between sharing how you spent 10 hours fixing a nasty bug in useWhatever
hook, rescuing your prod environment and sharing stories on how one learnt useState
while making a Todo App. Use that to your advantage.
And even if you will ran out of topics at some point in the future... so what? Be proud of what you've done.
End note
Took me about two hours to write that down, Iâm happy now. My shitposting is just about to begin ă˝(´â˝`)/
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