Why I started writing in public

I started writing in public three years ago. The first post was bad. The second was worse. The third was the one that taught me why I was doing it. Here’s the honest version of why I keep going.

The first year was for the writing

I started because I wanted to get better at explaining technical things. The writing is the practice. If you can’t explain it, you don’t understand it. The blog was the forcing function.

The first year I wrote about Proxmox, networking, and the small CLI tools I was building. The posts were too long. The posts were too detailed. The posts were unread. I kept writing.

What I learned: writing about a thing is the fastest way to find the gaps in your understanding. The act of writing forces you to make the implicit explicit. The gaps show up as the places where you write “and then it just works” and realize you don’t know why it works. You go back to the source. You figure it out. You rewrite the post. You understand the thing now.

The second year was for the network

Around month 14, the comments started. People who had the same problem I had. People who had a different solution. People who pointed out bugs in my code. The network was the part I didn’t expect.

I had a misconception. I thought the blog was one-way. I write, you read, that’s the deal. The blog is not one-way. The blog is a node in a network. The network includes the people who read, the people who reply, the people who fork the code, the people who cite the post in their own work.

The network is the most valuable part. The writing is the price of admission. The network is the return.

The third year was for the discipline

Three years in, the blog is part of my week. I write one post on Saturday morning. I read the comments over coffee. I update old posts when the underlying thing changes. The blog is a maintenance task, like watering the plants.

The discipline is the part that surprised me. I expected the writing to get easier. It doesn’t. Each post is still 4-6 hours of work. The work gets more efficient (I have a template, I know what fits, I have a process for the diagrams), but the effort is the same.

What I didn’t expect: the discipline transfers. The habit of “write a post about this thing I learned” makes me learn things more deliberately. I notice more. I take better notes. I do the side-quest of figuring out why something works, not just that it works.

What I get out of it

Three concrete things:

Better code. The act of writing about a project forces me to finish it. Half-finished projects don’t get blog posts. The blog is a forcing function for completion.

Better network. The people I know from the blog are people who care about the same things I care about. The conversations are useful. The collaborations are real. The job offers (which I rarely take) are concrete.

Better thinking. The writing clarifies the thinking. The comments sharpen the writing. The cycle is a feedback loop that makes me better at the work.

What I don’t get out of it

I don’t get a large audience. The blog has about 2,000 readers a month. That’s a small number by internet standards. I don’t care.

I don’t get a lot of money. The blog has no ads, no sponsors, no paid newsletter. I make $0 from it. The blog is not a business. The blog is a public notebook.

I don’t get a reputation as a writer. I’m an OK writer. The blog doesn’t make me a better writer than the average technical blogger. The blog is not a portfolio. The blog is a record.

Why I keep going

I keep going because the writing is the practice, the network is the return, and the discipline is the side effect. The three together are worth the 4-6 hours a week.

If you’re thinking about starting a blog, start. The first post will be bad. The second will be worse. The third is the one that teaches you why you’re doing it. The trick is to write the third one.

If you have a blog and you’ve stopped, start again. The blog doesn’t need an audience. The blog needs a writer. Be the writer.