Lately I’ve been telling my friends, friends of friends, casual acquaintances, and random strangers I meet on the street that they should start a blog*. I’m not sure what’s gotten into me. Blogs are fun though, even if no one reads them. I’ve had a lot of trouble trying to justify this though, until I came across a really interesting article the other day:
That blog entry was written by Steven Yegge, a 30-something Google employee (though he was working for Amazon when he wrote that). My favorite observation from Stevey is that “struggling to express things that you’re thinking or feeling helps you understand them better.” I think he’s dead on there. If you take the time to write about something that’s on your mind, you’ll end up understanding it a lot better. It’s like having to teach someone something. The act of explaining the subject helps you better understand it – and it helps you understand how much you really know about that subject.
When I was in grad school I had to teach these 45 minute C++ lab courses. They were comprised of small groups of students from one of the computer science introduction lecture hall classes. I taught the labs daily, but they only ocurred once a week for each group of students. Even though I considered myself pretty proficient in C++, having to explain all the nooks and crannies made me realize I didn’t understand things as well as I thought. However, it turned out that each class usually had the same questions about C++ and the lab assignment (it was almost Twilight Zone-ish really), so I got progressively better at teaching the lab as the week went on. It was funny, on Monday I’d look like a bumbling slacker, but by Friday I seemed like some kind of C++ wizard. I actually had a couple of the Friday kids give me some strong complements on my C++ skills :P. So writing down your thoughts and exploring certain topics can help you better understand them.
Another thing Stevey does in his article is give and refute 4 popular excuses people give for not writing blogs:
- I don’t have enough time to blog.
- I’m afraid to put my true thoughts on public record.
- No one will read my blog.
- Blogging is narcissistic.
Reasons #1, #3, and #4 are petty excuses in my opinion. However, reason number #2 is not something that should be treated lightly. One’s opinions may be the “spice” to their entries, but you can get yourself in a lot of trouble if you don’t exercise some common sense. I’ve had employers, girl friends, ex-girl friends, and friends get pissed at me over entries I’ve written in past blogs. And not the kind of pissed where they grumble and forgive you 5 seconds later, the kind of pissed where you’re given the look of death and not spoken to for a while. You live and your learn though. I no longer blog about personal matters unless I have a good story to go with it. Plus it’s just more fun to write about my hobbies/interests than it is to write about things that annoy me or about my daily activities. I could probably write an entry on how I sat in a cube for 8 hours today and then went home and ate some ramen noodles, but it wouldn’t be very fun to write, and I’m sure it’d be even less fun to read.
So anyway, if you have the urge to blog, I highly recommend reading the above article. It’ll jump start your motivation. And don’t worry about no one reading your blog, you should write it for yourself. Hell, this blog isn’t even the most popular thing on this site – TAAG is (I’m actually surprised by this – it’s mostly due to Google though). Which reminds me, I need to get back to developing stuff. Anyway, think about what I said.
*If you’re one of these people, know that I didn’t write this entry to be directed at you. I actually have been a little over zealous in my promotion in blogging. I dunno why, it’s just gotten under my skin.
