I’ve recently seen some tweets expressing the pressure some people feel — understandably — of publishing their thoughts on a blog, fearing what others might say, wondering if it’s good enough to be published on this wonderful thing called the web. I would say treat the web like that big red button of the original Flip camera. Just push it, write something and then publish it. It may not be perfect, but nothing ever is anyway. I write all sorts of crap on my blog — some of it really niche like snippets for Vim. Yet it’s out there just in case someone finds it useful at some point — not least me when I forget how I’ve done something.
When I started blogging back in 2000, I never felt the pressure of making it perfect. And then as my career evolved — from professional journalist to a blogger to a founder of a blog-based media company, the pressure to get it right every single time started to make it difficult to blog. I began to post “pieces” and forgot that blogging for me is nothing more than “thinking out loud.” I will be wrong, dumb and sometimes unusual, along the way. And that is my objective for 2019.
