It’s curious that it’s taken me this long to create a personal blog. After all, I’ve been working with the web – including blog-specific software – for well over 20 years. I’ve created blogs for countless organizations, developed WordPress plugins (something I rarely admit), and helped prominent bloggers with SEO strategy. I’ve written dozens of “posts” in the form of print, social media, blog content for my various businesses, and even penned the occasional guest post. And there’s certainly plenty I could actually blog about: I have developing hobbies that I wouldn’t mind documenting, I’m a data nerd who loves to build custom graphs and charts (and APIs), and I’m a political junkie that all too often uses his poor wife as a sounding board (to which she often says, “why aren’t you writing this somewhere?”).
I suspect that much of my hesitation has been driven by fear. Fear that someone might will disagree with what I’ve written; fear that I’m not qualified to comment on certain subjects; and given how often I’ve accused others of doing just that (the Internet is powered by opinion, not fact, after all), there’s fear of becoming a hypocrite.
But I think in the end, I’ve realized that I want to blog for myself. As I said, I’d like to document – to preserve – my projects, my thoughts, and to some extent, my life. I’m tired of using social media to crudely accomplish that, when I’m capable of building my own tools. I’d also like a place where I can focus my thoughts (through writing), and share interesting things I’ve stumbled onto. And I’ll keep comments enabled, so if people disagree with what I write… I can actually engage in real debate.