Regular readers1 of this blog will have noticed that it was quiet for the last two months. This was on purpose, as was the lack of an announcement. There was also a reason for this: I didn’t feel like it.
The Fun
I’m writing this blog for fun-because I like writing. I’m writing it because I want to. And at the beginning of November, it felt less like fun and more like a chore. That was the sign for me to stop.
Why did it start feeling like a chore? Honestly, I don’t quite know. I’m sure there were multiple factors. I was busier than ever at work. I had a lot to do in my spare time, and it felt like this blog was just one more thing I had to do as well. Obviously, it was quite easy to stop doing this one additional thing since, well, I don’t actually have to do it.
And so I stopped.
The Diary
Another contributing factor was that I was treating this blog like my personal, but public, diary. I know that a few of my friends are reading this blog. I also know from the tracking data that a great many people I don’t know are reading it as well2. And to be honest, while I wasn’t super comfortable with strangers reading my personal thoughts, I was actually more comfortable with the strangers reading the blog.
I was more surprised by the friends (and friends of friends) who were reading it. Multiple times, friends of mine brought up something I had written on this blog but hadn’t talked to them about. Which is fair enough-it’s a public blog, and people are entitled to read it-but it was something that surprised me nonetheless.
I was treating this like a private diary, posted it to the public, and then I was surprised when people would read it. I know.
The Future
I want to start writing this blog again. And to do that, it doesn’t need to feel like a chore anymore. And I need to change the strange feeling that people are actually reading this.
So I’m going to write less-write once a month.
And I’m going to write about different things. This is my public blog, not my diary. So I need to start treating it as such.
To my surprise, there was such a thing as regular readers, as reported by the tracking I used to have. Since I don’t want to know anymore, I removed the tracking. So if you’d like me to know that you’re reading this, you’ll need to message me: blog@oli.fyi ↩︎
I know this from the countries and datetimes that were reported, but I also know it from another simple factor: there are more people reading this blog than I have friends, and it’s not even close. ↩︎