WordPress informed me this morning that my subscription will be auto-renewed in a couple of weeks. That got me thinking. Am I spending money for no reason? Its been a while since the last time I wrote a post and even more since I was writing regularly.

The benefits

Has this blog helped me somehow? For that I am sure, it has!

Better communicator

Back in 2019, when I started writing, I already had a ten years experience on programming.
I knew how to do things but I was having trouble on passing that knowledge to my co-workers.
Why? I was never providing the entire context. My mind was skipping bits just because it was taking them for granted. I know them so my listeners most probably know them too!

It was blogging, and the fact that I did not have someone in front of me to ask a question or to be confused, that forced me into always building a proper context. Into taking the time to organize my thoughts, trying to break them to small pieces, putting them in the proper order and to give all necessary examples.

A skill that started here but soon enough moved into emails, messaging and finally talking live (I’m pretty sure I get less confused looks :P).

Deeper knowledge

Writing to a public blog makes you feel exposed. So I started to second guess myself and think that a mistake in my examples will bring thousands of years of shame upon my family!

So I started researching. I read articles, books and anything that is related to what I was about to write! I dove into GitHub and any public code of the framework/language I was using.

At the end, I was spending many hours for a ten lines blog post, but I knew a lot more about the post’s subject!

Personal branding

I started writing because I wanted to express a few of my believes and approaches on programming. Watching how others were doing it, I mimicked them and after each post I was also making a tweet and a LinkedIn post.

That got me new connections, a couple of cool discussions and a few job offers.

In other words, I now have a small place in the internet that anyone can visit and see a few things about me and my work.

Small dopamine doses

I won’t lie. I like it when a post of mine gets featured, or gets a thank you comment. I like it when I see in my stats a team’s tool as a referrer. There is a team out there that uses one of my posts as learning material!

Just start writing

So, am I spending money? Nah. I might write less often but I like having this place. At the end of the day it helps me grow and that is enough.

Should you do it?

Don’t worry if someone else has written about the topic you want. Don’t worry if you don’t have a specific style at first. Don’t worry if no one will read it. Just write about something you want. Something you learned, something you discovered, something that puzzles you. Just start writing!