# Liked: Finding my space – Nitin Khanna...
"I’ve tried daily blogging, daily journaling, daily private blogging, scribbling notes on a throwaway page on the net, all in an effort to just put words on the screen, to just ‘be’. It doesn’t matter that those words are perfect. Or, well, it shouldn’t. I still fret over it."
Nitin's struggles with perfection echo mine. No matter how much I try to just 'be' there is always a nagging doubt, a little voice saying "that's not good enough." I try to ignore it but it doesn't always work. I have to remind myself from time to time and it was one such reminder that prompted his post.
We are told "you can only do your best" but we don't always have to, we sometimes just have to do. We can come back to it, improve, iterate if needed.
Comments
# That moment you find a bit of test code in a dummy theme file and can't remember what the heck it was for.
# I spent most of this evening going back and forth with support from the web host to figure out why my loadHTMLFile() calls weren't working.
Even though allow_url_fopen was enabled in the PHP settings the error logs showed the calls failing due to allow_url_fopen=0 despite making numerous configuration changes.
In the end I had to use cURL and convert the result to DOMDocument so I should be okay now. My testing looks good but I won't be completely certain until someone sends a webmention from their own domain.
In the meantime I added the missing items to the database so that the /directory OPML is up to date.
@colinwalker My problem with posting is not being perfect but important. Still too many (?) times my brain tells me that posting this (and in general) is not important. Not sure if this reply is important :)
@kulturnation @colinwalker I'm on the other, less impressive, end of the spectrum. I don't worry about perfection or value of posts. I just hammer out what I'm thinking about, give it a quick edit, and hit Publish. If I were looking for an Audience™ it might be different, but that's not why I have a blog. If I had to carefully consider (aka overthink) everything I published I'd just pull up the stakes and go home.
@jack Jack, I enjoy reading your posts so there is at least one good reason why they are important. But what is your reason having a blog? (Maybe your answer will help me to reduce my selfmade barriers for posting) @colinwalker
@kulturnation Thanks, I appreciate that. Good question though. Mostly I do it as a technical and personal journal of sorts. I very often search my blog to see when I did something or what I thought about it. Sometimes it's telling my future self about my current process or why I did something. I enjoy other's posts about what they think about a product or process or technique so I try to record my thoughts on those things. Now you've got me thinking :).
@jack I like reading comments on software or „things“, and sometimes it is okay for me posting about a positive experience with my NEO writer (because I want to evangelise :D). After leaving Twitter I very often had the impulse to send out something to the platform, and when I recognized that I have no account I thought „no problem, life goes on“. Sometimes the unwritten tweet became a postcard to a friend.
@jack Well said!
@jack @kulturnation Great continuation guys.
Like you, Jack, my blog is very much a personal record but, although I’m not actively seeking an audience, I know others do read so some posts are obviously to inform them of my process or opinion on something.
Michael, I get round the importance aspect by thinking if it was important enough for me to consider putting it in to words then it’s important enough for me to hit publish regardless of whether anyone else finds it important.
I think I spent too long trying to write like a journalist rather than a blogger over the years and need to get out of the habit.