Why Do I Blog?14 Apr 2013
The same thing will happen to this blog as ones before it. I will get excited about writing, but inevitably, the blog will go untouched and unmaintained. The question I should ask myself is “Why do I blog?” I’ve come up with some answers to this and other related questions in parts.
Why do I do anything?
It is a pretty vague question, and the answer I give will probably be insufficient, but I enjoy doing things that challenge me or force me to learn something new. Some examples from my past: Why did I learn Dvorak? Why did I start actively managing my money (with both short and long-term goals)? (When did I start putting one space after punctuation instead of two?)
Most of my hobbies have come from the “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if I tried this?” mentality. I learn best by doing - a lesson will be truly hammered home when I can experience it for myself. In other words, I will never start writing in a blog again unless I just start writing in a blog.
What am I learning from this blog?
- This blog is hosted on GitHub Pages. It’s my first project outside of work to utilize Git.
- I’m forcing myself to learn Jekyll and Markdown. (I know there are other static html generators and formatting syntax, but the integration of GitHub Pages, Jekyll, and Markdown is awesome).
- I’ve done all of the development for this project online. I started with Prose and have moved on to Cloud9. (I’ve been interested in getting a Chromebook for quite some time and I’m exploring how much of my workflow can be done in a browser window).
Other reasons
- My previous blog was hosted on Posterous and they’re going kaput on April 30th. I had to retrieve my posts and files from blog posts and move my web presence somewhere else.
- My first personal website was self-written in PHP on a free host somewhere. Since then, I’ve used WordPress (self-hosted and not) and then moved to Posterous for a more web-friendly hosted solution. The thing I liked about Posterous over other platforms was its tight integration with email. The GitHub Pages/Jekyll/Markdown solution is reliable, web-friendly, and will allow me to poke at code.
All of this is why I’ve started blogging again. Let’s see how long I stick with it this time….
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