The highs & lows of 5 years of blogging
Table of Contents
Somewhere in the dark months of 2018 after a long day of work. On the international train from Berlin, between Deventer and Apeldoorn I came up with an idea for a blog post. I’ve tried to start my own blog before, but I fell into the “build your blogging platform from scratch” trap every single time.
This time I decided to change it. I’ll just launch a default WordPress site, and publish my writing. I can always change my platform once I gain momentum.
And after some days of writing, editing, and running it past coworkers, my first blog post was published. Why you should place your code on an open-source platform. The start of a journey.
Luckily over time, publishing became easier, and now 5 years and 71 blog posts later. It’s time for a little anniversary celebration.
My favorites
If I think about all the ups in 5 years of blogging, there are too many to count. I’ve had some amazing experiences. But there were a few that stood out:
- Speaking on a podcast: Unfiltered Build Episode 06 Motivation Porridge (Bucket list right there)
- Ranking in the Weekly top 7 on dev.to and earning some cool swag
- Running a recruiter experiment on Linkedin, to get back at those annoying recruiters.
- Any metrics-related post, like What has blogging brought me so far?
- Going semi-viral with The 4 lessons I learned as a Starting Scrum master on Reddit, and watching the real-time report on Google Analytics for an entire day
Not to forget the amazing people I’ve met. Who inspired me, taught me many skills, and introduced me to several Slack workgroups with inspiring leaders worldwide.
The hardest parts
I don’t know if you’ve noticed. But I am not consistent. Write 5 blog posts in a month, to write only one in 5 months. I like writing, the hardest part for me is to find topics to write about.
It can be frustrating when I’m in a “I want to write but have no idea what to write about” mood. I read books on writing and tried several approaches, but I haven’t found the perfect solution yet…
With my writing I intend to teach something, hopefully something you didn’t know before. The struggle in finding a suitable topic is usually in finding something that I take for granted, but myself from 2/3 years ago might not have known. This resulted in me changing my style. From in-depth guides to shorter articles for SEO to just writing what’s on my mind.
The future
Of course, I’m going to keep creating content. I love writing and will keep blogging (possibly inconsistent). There are however a few areas that have piqued my interest which I might explore in the future:
- YouTube, creating video content in the Engineering Management niche
- Public speaking, either joining meetups or guest lectures in schools
- Writing an (e)book.
Thank you!
A big thank you for reading this (and my other) posts. In the last 5 years, blogging has gifted me things I would have never anticipated. I learned skills I would never have used in my day-to-day job, I’ve met interesting and great people, and it has opened doors for me.
Besides thanking you as a reader, I’d like to thank everyone around me who has been supportive and given me the little nudge to create. Without all of you, this would probably not have happened.