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Comment by hifikuno | Hacker News Reader

I've tried to start blogging many times. But I always find I have nothing to speak about. I also have this mental hurdle of thinking my blog's have to be super serious and professional. This time around I'm trying to take myself less seriously and treat it as a way to store things I'd like to remember in the future.

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> But I always find I have nothing to speak about.

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.

I feel like I never understand anything well enough to tell other people about it - the bare information I have can easily be acquired by anyone else without reading anything I write so my writing is a waste of time (when it comes to writing for other people anyway)

Often writing for yourself (“how I did x when I didn’t know how”) is useful enough without being an expert on the subject. You can refer back to it later on if you forgot how you did it, or someone else who was in your shoes will appreciate it. Also makes things less daunting (“hey others are going through the same as me”).

Everyone learns things in a different order and in different ways, so an alternative explanation or source of information can still be valuable. Sometimes I have an important realization simply because something I'd already known for years was presented from a different angle, or maybe just because I rediscovered it in a more fitting moment of my life.

And if someone doesn't find it useful, well, they'll just stop reading and go somewhere else.

I find the amount of interesting things I have to say correlates strongly with the amount of quality reading I do. It doesn't have to be related to what I'm saying. Like I've been inspired to write about technology by reading Herodetos.

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.

I wrote about that here: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/6/what-to-blog-about/

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.

I love the fact you have a post for that! That's amazing! I will take your advice. Cheers.

This advice is quite dangerous. For senior tech leaders disclosure of what they are working on often leads to disclosure of what a large part of company is working on. Even if company leaked information on what you are working on adding to it in your blog is not only about NDAs. Even if you own your company or startup and have a right to disclose you can cause damage. Even if your project is 'boring' disclosing information is potentially affecting company future outcomes.

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.

At a couple of companies I've maintained an internal tech blog (e.g. using Confluence) so that I can write about internal projects in a private-to-the-company way.

I use my google search history to find things.

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!

"Me too." I have never had a blog but I feel this time it could be interesting to share what I do and discover. I'll treat each post as a "subject" that can be updated, this way I won't have any pressure to do everything perfectly when the blog entry is published. Good luck.

Maybe its just not worth it. Lots of people enjoy it, good for them. It doesn't mean everyone will enjoy it or benefit from it. Some people like skinny dipping in the middle of Winter - I dont do that either.

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