I’ve done some existential exploration about this blog before. Now, over 6 months later, I still have very similar problems.
Very modest success
I’ve succeeded in being a somewhat productive blogger. I have written some 22 posts since then (that’s about 4 a month), and about 50 more drafts, and my site now averages about 35 visitors a day. This is not in any way impressive, but at the same time it’s quite an achievement, given that before I used to write about 3 posts a year, and my site had maybe 30 visitors a month.
The posts I want to write
It is still true that I could be much more prolific. There are so so many more things I desperately want to write about. Mostly I want to write more opinion pieces, rather than tech pieces.
I want to write about women’s rights and representation of women in tech. I want to write about equality; about punishment and rehabilitation; about how money can’t make you happy; about the role companies should play in people’s lives; about why openness and transparency is so important in people’s lives.
But I can’t let myself write about any of these things because I’m shit scared of someone actually reading it. I’m so terribly afraid that people will think my opinions are stupid, or abhorrent, and hate me for them.
The readers I want
But I also really want readers. I want to have a community of people who regularly read my blog posts and will respond to them, comment on them, create discussion. I think more personal and honest posts would help with that, so I really need to get over this fear of their opinions.
I think I both need to write more, and more on topics that I’m really interested in. That’s what I should do. Hopefully it would help me develop a voice, increase the quality of my posts, and also hopefully help me grow a thicker skin.
Where from here?
So I need to set myself challenges. I need to ask people to encourage me to blog about topics that I’m interested in, and maybe even ask friends to read and comment on my posts. I need to make sure I’m writing and publishing at least a blog post a week.
I’ll leave it here for now, and see how I get on.