Top 5 Reasons Why I Write
The sincerity of number 4 will SHOCK you!
30 May 2024That’s right, I’m not above clickbait titles. There’s not even a reason for me to do it - I don’t run ads, I don’t track impressions, I don’t even have a late 90s/early 2000s visitor count. I’m doing clickbait for the love of the game, for the respect of the hustle.
1. It gets the thoughts out
You ever have something stay on your brain for longer than you want it to? Maybe you listened to a really good album that’s been stuck in your head for ages, so you keep asking people if they’ve listened to it (or begging your friends to check it out). Or perhaps you watched a movie and you’ve got a theory or thematic interpretation about it that you’ll tell anyone who will listen to you.
This blog is an extension of that for me. It provides a way for me to get those thoughts out about all these things I’ve got stuck on my brain. It’s not just about media, but also dumb little concepts that I come up with such as how I review things.
I’ve always been the type of person that once something is in my head I gotta act on it so I can move on, so being able to write a blog post and publish it really gets it out of my system.
2. Builds my writing skills
These days all the longer form writing I do is for work - which is usually either technical documentation or Slack messages asking people to get excited for an office bake off. I’m not saying that isn’t useful writing but it’s also formulaic and it’s always the one style. For the former, it’s dry and direct, for the latter it’s an overly positive tone with an exclamation mark every three sentences and an emoji per key point.
Writing for me had become a stagnant experience with limited room for growth. I know that I’m not always going to be writing just that stuff, so I needed some way to keep my pen sharp.
The blog helps out with that a lot! From a monthly review article to feature pieces like “You Should Eat Trash”, I get to stretch the metaphorical legs a bit and mix things up. It’s nice being able to have an opinion and write about that. It’s also nice being able to write about whatever and getting to think about how I want to do things like format and structure it. It’s an ever changing beast which I’m thankful for because the only variety I get from my work writing is which emoji to use for cake 🎂 🍰 🧁.
3. I get to learn a lot of stuff
Creating the blog has let me learn a lot of new things. I didn’t know anything about the best way to run it and host it, so I had to figure that stuff out. I read up about the easiest blog frameworks to use, learned how to host it and redirect to the custom URL, and voila! I rarely work with anything front end related with my job (because I am bad at it) but I wanted my blog to look ✨ pretty ✨ and have a tag page. So then I had to learn how to do basic HTML and CSS things, which I know is basic but it’s still cool to me gosh dang it.
This silly little thumbnail is a great example of the stuff I learn to do for the blog
Every thing I do on this blog is a small learning experience and it’s not always technical either. I made the Monthly Review graphic, but I also figured out how to make it an easily reusable template so that I don’t have to worry about how to do it again in a month’s time. I like that I’m learning new things, especially if they’re outside my usual wheelhouse.
4. This one tweet
When I was a junior engineer at MYOB, I was trying to write my first work blog post and I was stuck as hell dude. I was struggling a lot with feeling like I had nothing new to say or that what I did have to say didn’t have weight because I was still early in my career. I remember being so torn between trying to power through and get it done, or just giving up on the whole thing. I posted about it on Twitter and I got probably the most important bit of writing advice I’ve ever been given.
It’s hard to overstate how much this tweet was a real perspective change for me. I was getting so caught up about who was going to read what I wrote, if they’d care or if they’d find it helpful. But realising that I can just write for me (past, present and/or future) but still be able to affect a wider audience was crazy. That’s what this whole blog is built on.
Even though the advice was focused more on work related blog posts, the general premise just makes me feel so much more confident when I’m writing. This one tweet has made everything I write way easier and I can’t imagine I’d want to write as much without it.
5. It’s just fun!
Writing is fun, I like doing it! It brings me joy, and I want to continue doing it as long as I enjoy it. Everyone should do things that they like doing!
So that’s my top 5 reasons why I write, but what are yours??? Let me know in the comments and look forward to our future quiz “Which software developer and occasional blog writer am I?”