How to blog more

When I was 16, I started my first blog: jerrysunnewsletter.wordpress.com. I set up a Wordpress account, wrote a blog post or two, then told my friends about it.

“Look guys, check out this website. This is gonna be an archive of my insights. Make sure you follow along.” The purpose was to create a record to look back on and show people that I once had certain thoughts (ideally the ones that turned out to be correct).

Except after a few posts that site remained pretty empty. Over 5 years, I probably wrote 20 posts. Why?

For one, unique insights are rare for anyone, much less for a teenager. Teens all share the same life angsts. In my goal to write differentiated stuff, I found out that I didn’t really have that much differentiation to start with. And a few years onward, in the moments that I did, I didn’t actually have the courage to put it in writing. Being different is scary. It’s even scarier when it’s a political opinion where you worry someone might take personally.

An even bigger hurdle was the restrictions I imposed on myself. Each post had to be cleanly written with no grammatical or spelling errors. Each post had to be about 1,000 words. Each post had to be tied to current events, be it business or technology or along those lines. And it was something that I had to feel really added value to readers. All that meant writing was a heavy endeavor, not a carefree act. My approach towards these goals led me to fall discouraged and give up the endeavor entirely.

I’ve recently found some blogs where people just post whatever they want. Some of it is what I’d consider “productive” or professional thinking. But posts also include their fitness routine. Where they shop. Things they like to do. Anything they want. My friend calls is “journaling in public”.

So here’s my plan to blog more. I’m going to do something similar. I’ve got some time now so I’m going to take the pressure off myself to write great posts and just write about whatever I want. I’m not going to quadruple check each post for errors. Nor do I feel a need to post it on my resume or LinkedIn or out on social media anymore. Hell, I don’t even need readers. I’m hoping to just write with the carefree approach I was missing more than a decade ago and see where it takes me.