Me, Myself And My Blog
My relationship with blogging has been flaky at best. Occasionally, I get this desire to write it out, like a cleansing ritual. When writing, I feel like the words that crowd my soul leave, giving way to a more peaceful state of mind.
That, of course, only works if I'm not afraid to speak my mind freely.
That isn't easy if you're on social media. Every word you write triggers someone and starts an argument because starting one is so easy. I need more than a couple of hundred characters to convey my ideas; I've always favoured long-form writing like blogging, so social media isn't a comfortable place for me.
Because I can't easily express my thoughts in the narrow alleys of social media platforms, they lose context. Every time I start putting my weight on social media, one of two things happen that makes me quickly pull back:
- I mostly come off as too strict and overly confident, which I'm really not. But that triggers people, and we get into an argument.
- I feel like I won't be able to explain myself correctly, which makes me hesitate and lose confidence in my words. I would end up skipping writing, or the written text stays in draft until it gets deleted.
It's frustrating for me to keep up the habit of writing because I'm overthinking how it would come off. Am I making my point correctly? Have I thought this through? What if someone criticises it or criticises me? What if I look like an idiot, or worse, like a MAGA-idiot?
This happens less if I'm writing on the topics I'm very experienced in, like how to build an application with Microsoft's tooling and host it, etc., but even that gets blocked eventually.
I've written over 20 articles on my other blog, That Blue Cloud, about Microsoft Azure and Fabric platforms in a span of 2 months. Since then, my enthusiasm has diminished, and so has my confidence.
So, now, I'm trying something new. Writing whatever I want on this blog, regardless of whether it reduces the SEO. The comments are disabled, so people can't easily respond with quick criticisms. This is also my private corner, hosted on my own servers from my own home, so I don't have to answer to anyone about my writing etiquette. I also don't worry about how many visitors it'll attract.
Even with all of these, I'm still hesitant. What if one of my clients sees what I'm talking about on a social topic and doesn't like it? What if I come off like a nationalist because of my choice of words, even though I don't give a flying fuck about it?
What if people read what I'm writing, and it makes my insecurities too visible to them, and they try to take advantage of it?
Bloody hell, it isn't easy being me.