Hello world or hello blog

So this is going to be my first blog post or first one in this kind of context where I publish it somewhere online as a series of things. Now, why even start a blog? What is the point?

Recently I got hooked on DHH‘s blog after I got interested in Ruby on Rails and DHH is probably the biggest personality behind RoR framework and probably in programming culture in general. I watched many of his interviews and his personality is very charismatic and attractive. His ideas and opinions about business and programming are very interesting.

He is very good at communicating his ideas and thoughts in a very entertaining fashion when speaking. I saw many of his podcasts before I read any of his blog posts. And then I found his writing and it found it to be even better than podcasts. Currently, his articles are my favorites from all the blogs I follow.

I can’t really understand why it is so, but I find his articles very easy to read and always very interesting. Maybe it is because my values and thinking align so well with his and everything he writes just lands very nicely with me.

One undeniable thing is that he is a very good writer and the way you present your ideas and point of view matters a lot for how easily the writing will be perceived by the reader. Now I don’t know what is more important the subject or the writing style/skill. But one thing is sure even the best idea in the world, expressed poorly may not land good or not land at all with the reader.

Ok, DHH is a good writer and I like most of his ideas and opinions. Why does it matter? In one of his talks or articles, he mentioned that “good writing means good thinking” and this clicked with me instantly. It is one of these things when you hear it you just instantly realize that you have known it but never have been able to put it so laconically. And DHH has been writing constantly for many years about business and programming. Now could this be the reason why he is just so good at expressing his ideas in writing and speaking, because of many years of practice? Well probably his natural talent plays a big role but surely practice for many years couldn’t have hurt.

Now this is where it comes to me. I have always been very bad at expressing myself mostly in speaking not much in writing; but mainly because I have never done any writing. Even just thinking about sitting down and writing about some specific topic in a congruent way seems like an impossible task and writing itself in my mind seems like a very hard thing, it feels like something that I would never be able to be good at or be able to do. I’m not joking, writing even a small article of around 500 words seems something to me like something I could never do and is out of my league.

But turns out all monsters are not monsters but where did they come from? In reality, whenever I have tried writing I have found the process quite enjoyable mentally. Of course, the initial 5 minutes seemed daunting because I couldn’t think of what to write and my brain seemed blank no ideas were coming to my mind and I would be just watching a blank space and thinking “Why I am even trying this”.

But as time goes on and I start to add a little bits to the empty page it starts to get easier and ideas start coming to my mind. Sometimes I even reach short bursts of a somewhat flow state where I can write without stopping. It may not be a good ideas or good writing but it surely solves the blank space and blank brain issue. And I’m able to reach a sort of diary-level flow of writing. Now this already seems like an achievement because in my world event such kind of writing seemed too difficult because I always thought that I was just not the type of person who can write.

When I tried writing consistently over a short period of time I found that I was getting a little bit better at a time or maybe the pain of writing was diminishing. In a couple of instances where I have tried to do diary-style writing but unfortunately didn’t stick to it I found the process quite enjoyable and got the newfound realization that maybe I have underappreciated my mental capabilities when it came to writing.

So why start a blog? My short answer is to make my thinking and expression of my thinking better. And if there is a small chance that blogging consistently can achieve that I think the effort is worth the gain. Because the way we think and express ourselves impacts all areas of our lives. This could be one of the small things that if done consistently for a long period of time could impact our lives so much.

But why make it public why not do the diary? For three reasons, if it’s public and nobody reads it, in my mind, there is still a barrier of entry for content that can be accessed by anyone online than for private content. I feel like it must be much more polished and all unclarities must be ironed out. It makes me slack much less than writing something private.

The second reason is that public content is written to be read by someone else so by default you write in a style to communicate with other humans in an understandable and congruent manner or at least try to do that, and that is a big requirement to be successful in a professional level, also maybe in private life, if you are still into writing letters to people. But to be honest I would be quite impressed by receiving maybe not a letter but an email from a friend expressing his thought or idea in a long format writing, there is just some respect I give to a person who wrote you a big block of text and it is genuine and logical.

The third reason is that anything you put online could be used to ridicule or make fun of you. Basically, call you stupid and your ideas stupid. Now this is probably one of these fears that in reality would never happen. But just acknowledging that I’m okay with it even if it would happen just gives me more power to share my ideas and thoughts with the world in my professional and private life.

The current idea is to choose every week one topic of whatever I think is currently important to me in my life or something I have been thinking a lot about and write about it for one hour. There will be a soft stop, I will try not to cross too much of the allocated time because I know otherwise my procrastination and perfectionism will never let me finish anything in a reasonable time. Ok, I’m ready to end this and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.