/blog

Today is an important day in my blogging calendar – the anniversary of my decision in 2016 to reboot everything and return to the blog after what was more than two years away.

I've written about this on a number of occasions over the years, largely saying similar things each time, but feel it's worth returning to on each anniversary to remind myself why I do this, why I always return to the blog no matter how many breaks I take or for how long.

As I remarked last year, it took nearly a year to get back into my stride and put 'the old way' of blogging behind me. In reality I went full circle and returned to the way I used to write when I first started. I had gotten into the mindset that everything had to be an essay - too much was discarded. From the post by Matt Gemmell I shared yesterday:

"Those who do blog will often sit on pieces for too long, because they're waiting until they have more to say – or they shelve pieces entirely, wrongly believing they're too brief and thus somehow trivial."

This is exactly how I used to be. The waiting meant so much went unsaid.

As I have said, I now find myself reverting: "Microposts and writing about code are all well and good but I miss the depth I used to have." There needs to be a balance and I need to ensure I don't obsess and swing too far one way or the other. Finding the right flow can be challenging, I don't know why, when it should be just writing whatever comes naturally rather than constantly overthinking it.

But I digress. Today is my own private celebration of blogging and what it means to me. I still get incredibly frustrated with the creative process (here and elsewhere) but these posts each year help to reiterate that the process is worthwhile, no matter the result.

'On This Day' has always shown posts on the same day from other years. I decided to change that so it shows posts from all years instead, even the year it is accessed from. Makes more sense to have it all in one place without gaps.