This is my first published personal blog post in a long time. Like I'm sure most people in and around tech have, I've threatened to do this for too long. Here's some of the hows and whys, in hope that you'll do the same, if you haven't already.

Don't get hung up on the how

I've thought about blogging a lot before. My mistake is normally focusing too much on how to do it, rather than just getting a post published. fast_template offered a quick and simple way. Maybe...

If you're reading this, then it's because that post is sufficient to achieve the core point of a blog - get some info out there.

1 thing published is better than 0 things published

If it's not published and readable by others, it's not a blog, it's a personal diary. Realising this made me realise I have a lot of half complete personal diaries over the years.

A personal diary has its place, but it has a different set of benefits to a blog. 2 Notable benefits of a published blog vs an unpublished personal diary:

1. External Feedback: without external feedback, you're missing out opportunities to learn and improve. Whilst there are benefits to introspection and personal diarying, if you already think 2+2 is 3, you're probably not going to tell yourself that it's actually 4. Cunningham's Law suggests that the internet will if you give it chance.
2. Informing Others Nobody else benefits directly from the writing down of knowledge in a personal diary. If just 1 person reads this post, and gets even the slightest bit of benefit, entertainment, or motivation, that means multiple people have received direct value from me publishing this. "More than 1 person benefits" seems generally more beneficial to everyone than "1 person benefits".

"But I just need to get another couple of pages done!" - No you don't. 1 page published is infinitely better than 0 pages in achieving the above.

Everyone is different - you won't know until you try

I haven't had a personal blog in probably over a decade. I might be wrong, maybe it's better not to publish, maybe nobody wants to read what you or I have to think or say. A lot of people won't want to. There's possibly even 1 or more people who only have stuff to share that literally nobody else on the planet could get any kind of benefit from.

However, those people are probably in the minority: there are a lot of broad minded folks who take many forms of benefit from many different things people have to share.

The only way you will know if your content is better published or unpublished is to publish it and find out - don't trust what anyone else says on this, me included!

I want interesting things to read - it makes everything better

This is a purely selfish point, but I hope most people agree in the same selfish way. I want interesting things to read. The more people who post personal blogs about their hobbies, interests, passions and professions, the more likely I am to have something interesting to read.

I want you to have more interesting things to read too, so then you're more engaged, interesting, knowledgeable, skilled and open minded when we get the pleasure of interacting. It makes my life easier.

If you've not published a blog before, and you've got at least one half complete website with one pretty much finished but not published post, just do it!

tl:dr;

I published a blog post, and I think you should too. The primary purpose and benefit of a published blog is to get info out there. That is what has the chance to make me a better and more educated person, people other than me better and more educated people, and everyone has a chance at a slightly more interesting life. Who wouldn't want those things? It's not too hard with Github Pages and fast_template.