Why Did I Think Starting a Blog was so Hard

Why did I think starting a blog was so hard?

It’s supposed to be fun - you write your thoughts, and maybe somebody reads them and responds. I think I’ve been paralyzed by the need to be perfect - I’m a writer, and I had all these ideas in my head of long form pieces to write, but I figured I needed to research and revise and continue in that cycle until I produced a The New Yorker or The Atlantic or Harper’s Magazine. And then I thought, well I’m a software engineer as well, so I have to build my blog from the ground up as a way of proving myself. Which is something I did before, sort of (I used NextJs to make a simple blog some years back). All these factors just managed to hold me back - my website never felt right, I kept getting lost in the code and trying to start over again. And I couldn’t write down a full post that I was happy with. I didn’t feel knowledgeble enough, or like I had anything interesting to say.

Thankfully, I got a therapist! And through some sessions (and some inner reasoning) - I realized I don’t have anything to prove. I’m not a web developer and I’m not trying to make the next Instagram - I can use a simple blog template, and not worry about it. And I can write whatever I want, and it doesn’t have to be complete - I’m not a staff writer at The Atlantic, I’m not getting paid for this lol. And I do have interesting things to say - this is the biggest thing I realized. I have interesting things to say and I want I place to say them, so that place will be here. And thus, my blog began!