Mine hit 20 last year: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Jun/12/twenty-years/
It turns out the only one who needs to care is yourself!
I recently bought a random domain and my very first post went up towards the end of April. I kinda knew I wanted to write about gaming, and I feel it’s slowly developing and a core concept is forming every day that goes by.
I don’t really care about up to date gaming news and reviews, it turned out I’m interested looking back on my own history of gaming and talking about anything gaming adjacent I love so I write about those things, and hope other people can relate! I have dabbled in an attempt at an SEO post as well but it was for a game I am actively playing so doesn’t seem too disingenuous!
People shouldn’t get bogged down about what to write, you’ll eventually discover what you want to do the more you actually do it. It’s like a muscle!
And a link if anyone is interested: https://chronodrift.com
Early on, it was a couple hundred posts a year, but I got really politically engaged in the wake of the 2000 election and that helped encourage activity. Busiest year was 2007, with 1,147 posts.
Last year was only 28, but I'm nearly at that for 2023 already. Less politics now, more writing, and more just sharing stuff. I need to hook up the share-to-Mastodon thing since I'm obviously no longer sharing to Twitter.
Mine's been through several platforms -- first Blogger, then to Grey Matter, then Blosxom (whose simplicity I really miss), and for a few years on Movable Type, before landing (obviously) on Wordpress in 2012. I had comments for a while, but that became untenable, and also less rewarding in the era of social media.
Early on, when corporate sites were typically hosted IN HOUSE, like in the same building that business got done in, it was fun to look through the logs and see recognizable domains -- a buddy's law firm in NY, etc. Eventually when colos took over that stopped being as easy to do, and that I look back at doing so fondly probably dates me.
TLDR version: publish TILs (Today I Learned) since then there's no pressure to say something new - just write about a thing you just figured out. And write about projects that you have done.
Ofc one can have his own pet projects and only blog about them. But in the world where a cat tiktok account was allegedly used for spying there is no such thing as private tech blogs anymore.
Odds are you do have something interesting to speak about. Many people are experts in very niche things and don't even realize it. You may be very proficient with a niche piece of software that is not well documented, or may have created software to solve a very specific problem. Writing blog posts about your niche knowledge can be tremendously helpful; I can't tell you how many times a single blog post about an obscure problem has saved me hours (possibly even days or weeks) of research when I've encountered the same problem.
And if someone doesn't find it useful, well, they'll just stop reading and go somewhere else.
I blog when I feel like writing rather than when I have something to write about. Then I go to https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?pli=1&product=19 and see what I was researching in the last month or two.
Theres usually something there where the existing articles were out of date (because tech!) or maybe it took me multiple results to actually solve my own issue.
That might be a way for you to find things.
Also I write for myself, I'm basically documenting for my future self so I dont have to research the same thing again. Some of my tech posts are just 2 lines of shell script and brief description so I can search google for my own content later but these posts still seem to be useful to other people based on views.
I think this could work for any blog where you're just writing about your interests or hobbies!
I think it's useful to view your mind as a garden. If you plant nothing then all you'll grow is weeds. If you get rid of the weeds and plant interesting ideas by engaging with new ideas, then it will grow interesting ideas on its own.
GitHub is a really amazing way to store information and it really didn't make sense to move discussions of those kinds elsewhere. The context gets easily lost when a lot of these 'self-discussion' was a simple one-liner like 'I found this bit on SO that refuted X'. I saw my thoughts evolve over several days as I uncovered new information and added it to the issue.
Thank you.
I started a new one this month - https://nosduhz.com
So I guess I meet both of your criteria for the best times to start a blog!
Why do you say so?
PG has been beating that drum for a few decades, and I’ve experienced it too
And knowledge compounds — knowing stuff makes you learn faster, which can lead to new jobs, friends, projects, etc
I’ve also found it gratifying when undergrads are reading and referencing posts I wrote when they were 13 years old
There’s something very nice and human about that
Likewise I learned a ton from Joel Spolsky’s blog when I was 22
I recently noticed I've been writing about SQLite since 2003! https://simonwillison.net/tags/sqlite/