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Reflections on 13 years and 1,000 posts of writing on my blog

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According to my shiny new Stats page - I've now published 1,000 blog posts on my blog.

In the spirit of regular celebration / reflection I figured it was worth sitting down and marking the occasion.

Writing stats

Writing Stats

13 years of writing

We got here via 13 years of writing but that only really counts the number of articles I currently have on my site. I actually started writing sometime in 2009-2010 on one of my tech / video game / gadgets blogs but those are lost to the interwebs (and probably not worth salvaging). And this doesn't account for the dozens and dozens of journals I've had over the years with essays / reflections that will never see the light of day.

If I recall correctly, I started writing because:

I think I've kept writing for similar reasons but several external motivators joined them:

How I keep writing

I often get asked how I write so much - though I think some of that question implies why do I write so much.

The answer is I do it habitually. If there's a big enough idea I've had floating around in my head and I think others might find it useful / interesting then I usually think it's worth logging it somewhere. If I don't, I'll likely just keep thinking about it so might as well get it out of my head and on the internet where people can find it.

My typical buckets are (stolen from Simon Willison):

If I did one of those, found it interesting, and think someone else would find it interesting - then it becomes a seed of a post.

My process is:

Over 13 years and 1k+ posts this process has gotten pretty streamlined and I can usually crank out a post in <1h. Probably not the best post you've ever read (based on my low readership numbers) but it gets the idea out there which is the goal.

I also think it's helped that I've kept the bar pretty low - I just want to get a basic idea out there roughly once a week. I schedule my posts weeks in advance so it's okay if I don't write anything for weeks on end. This removes a lot of the pressure that might occur to stay on schedule and/or perfect something.

Over the past 5 years, I've averaged ~100 posts a year (or ~2 a week). (I've recently realized this is equivalent to ~1-2 books a year).

Is it worth it?

I don't regret writing so much but I do think it comes with its highs and lows.

Highs:

Lows:

What I'd do differently

If I started my writing career over today, a few things I'd probably do differently:

What does the future hold?

Idk but I'll probably keep writing. I'm sure my output will fluctuate - some years more and some less - but I think I'll keep doing at least 1 post a week. My problem is usually too many ideas / thoughts to get on paper not too little.

At the end of last year, I decided to start a digital garden. If nothing else, I think that will live long-term as some public wiki pages I can share out to people.

I'm sure AI will have an impact on my work as well. I'm already using it to help review drafts and research topics. I could see a world where it starts writing outlines / drafts though I do feel too much of that removes the humanity from writing and that's one of the things I really like about reading people's blogs.

I'd love to monetize the blog further such that I could devote more time / energy to it. But tbh I'd probably keep writing on it even if my revenue and readership dropped to ~zero. It's kind of a habit at this point and one I tend to enjoy.

Next

Thanks for reading and here's to the next 1,000.

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