Why write a blog?

This is not a self-help guide on how blogging will help you. This is probably the same post that comes at the start of every blog and will be read by no one. So why write one?

I have been a web developer for 8 years now. During that time, outside of my job, I have worked on many half-finished or even closely finished MVP ideas that almost nobody will ever see. The silly amount of hours spent coding that will never be used outside of my own testing.

There is an argument to say that I learnt a lot in that time with new technologies, a lot on design, and finding what works for me as a process. I discovered where my limits are in understanding and how far I should stretch. There were periods near the beginning of my start in tech when I worked more hours outside of my job than I did in it. I know this because I built a time tracking app called TwoFour so I could fill all my available time outside of work. But apart from old, untouched private repos on GitHub, I don’t have any actual substance to show for it.

This is the real point. For the last 6 months I’ve been freelancing for the first time. I have had two part-time clients which I was fortunate to find. I’m still figuring out how I can find more, but most of the time I continue to develop my own projects.

This current project will not die in silence. It will have its etch in the world, the wide web part anyway.

So I want to keep up at least a relatively consistent, free-flowing stream of thoughts, decisions, and ideas around projects, coding, and freelancing. The last 6 months have flown by so fast. Even during a strong period of focus, progress feels incremental, though when I look back, so many decisions, pivots, and changes of focus have occurred. This is where I will start showing the evidence.

This has been a bit of a ramble, I hope to improve my writing as I go along, it has never been my forte. It has given me a couple more ideas for potential posts like: why freelancing, why I use Ruby on Rails, what I’m doing on my most recent projects.

For the first but hopefully not last time, thanks for reading.