Blogging - the mental game

After my last blog, I thought it would be time for something non-technical for a change. The reason: blogging!

I tend to have a love/hate relationship with blogs.

As a consumer of content, I think they’re awesome: an ideal form of a quick content fix along with a peak into how others approach issues, techniques, struggles etc.

As a creator of content, I tend to struggle with blogging quite a bit, getting various highs and lows on an almost steady schedule, like a sine curve.

The Lows

It has to be perfect

A big issue with me and blogs is being a perfectionist… I feel like content should be 100% perfect, 100% of the time before I publish it, otherwise there’s no use in publishing it.

This not only holds true for my blogs (as in the text), but also the code I might want to show. It means that in order for me to even start writing, I want my code to be working exactly as I need it to, having all the features that I have in mind.

As you can imagine, this is a pain to manage because every time I want to blog, I know it will eat up a lot of my time to do  so.

Which leads me to my second problem

Time

Since I have 2 young kids and a full time job, time is something I do not have an abundance of.

I know you need to make time for such things, as it is an investment in yourself and the most appropriate quote for me would be

If you’re not willing to invest in your career, why should anyone else?

But on the other hand it’s finding a balance combined with the extra weight of perfectionism that tends to make me think twice about blogging.

Impostor Syndrome

Until recently I was unaware of such a thing, but the moment a friend of mine suggested this, things fell in place.

While on the one hand I feel like I’m not half bad at what I do and my gained knowledge can be used to help others, I always have this nagging feeling that no matter how much effort I put into it, it’s not good enough and others can do/have done it better.

Luckily there are various articles to be found online on how to combat this and what to learn from it instead.

And while knowing is half the battle, it doesn’t mean that it I’m no longer affected by it. I just try to follow the following advice:

No matter how good or bad you are, there are always people in front of you and people behind you. So why waste time thinking about it?

The Highs

Don’t get me wrong, it might sound as if I find blogging horrible and should just stop completely for my mental sanity. There’s also a good side to it!

Sense of accomplishment

Whenever I’ve gotten myself to actually write a piece again, I feel happy and relieved.

I’ve managed to overcome all the negative associations and worked through them and actually created content! Not even thinking about how it might be received, I’m just happy that I’ve managed to get it out of my head and onto the web.

Reference point for information

One of the main reasons I had created this blog was to create a sort FAQ on technical content that I had spent too much time on to find over various sites. A single point of content to easily browse through and find whatever I had been struggling with at that time or the recent period.

Reception by others

While I write blogs as a means for me to clear my mind and to be able to  document my technical findings for future reference, it’s always nice if other people actually appreciate your work.

Basically this post is inspired by a previous blog post I had made, which I thought was so-so, to which I had received nice comments and likes by people I regard highly.

I as astonished that it was so well received while I thought this was a subject already covered many a times.

But it turns out that while there might be like 50 blog posts to be found on any matter, it doesn’t mean yours is worse than any of them and perhaps the person reading was able to find your post instead of the others..and liked it!

Sometimes it turns out I even made an error here and there, but people still thought it is good, so it’s great to help combat both Impostor Syndrome and perfectionism!

What’s next?

Well, for now I’m on the high side of things and am really hoping to be able to change the sine curve into either having smaller ups/downs or simply making the highs longer than the lows.

All in all, I hope to get more content out, making me more familiar with the process and less time spent on creating it.

That’s it for now, I hope it helps someone who has the same thought process see they’re not alone 🙂