My journey with writing didn’t just begin. I must have started a hundred times over now, to the point that you could say, I’m somewhat of an expert at starting (and stopping, but we’ll ignore that for the moment)
Some time last year, I stumbled upon some of my articles from more than 10 years ago and I thought.. What happened?!
It was almost alarming, first that I didn’t remember writing that much and second that I had articles in countless different database dumps, which were, I might add, thankfully archived and tucked away.
So I thought about why I didn’t continue all those other times and I realised that it was because I was a developer, as ironical as that sounds.
You see every time I started, I had to wrestle with the fact that I needed the site to look and feel different, and for the most part, I had nailed that. Just take a look at my past years’ portfolio sites and you’d see that time was spent on how the sites looked and functioned, more than it ever was focused on writing.
And so in December last year, I decided to start writing again but I wanted to focus on just that and wanted something simple, where I could use my own domain (hopefully for free) and was at least half-decent looking.
This time I didn’t want a portfolio site, and I didn’t want to be cornered into creating content I didn’t care much for, especially for ones that only ever served to impress those that stumbled on my site.
Enough, I thought, words meant more.
My research led me to Hashnode and Blogger. Both fit my primary criteria about custom domains.
I settled for Hashnode. Not because there was anything wrong with Blogger, mind you. I was writing in Obsidian, and Blogger didn’t support Markdown. (That was it!) I still can’t believe that alone decided it.
I started sharing posts on Reddit and one of them crossed 125k views with over 230 shares!
Smarter Subdomain and SSL Setup with Nginx: A Hands-On Guide
byu/chicagojango inselfhosted
That was a turning point, at least psychologically. Suddenly, what I wrote mattered more than anything I thought the site needed to be. It changed why I wrote, and how I built for writing.
And so write I did.
But most of all, I think the fact that it was a “flat” writing experience with no categories and strict topics to write about, or worse still, prematurely compartmentalizing posts to some preconceived idea of what the blog should be about – was exactly what I needed. No boxes. No buckets. Just a blank space and the thought, what if I just wrote anyway?
Don’t yet think about monetizing if you’re serious about writing.
Most “how to make money blogging” guides tell you to find your niche market. I’d say, find your niche voice first. (Or voices, as it apparently is in my case.)
A little perseverance has a funny way of bringing opportunities when you least expect it.
First Gig after years of Dabbling!
byu/chicagojango infreelanceWriters
When it does come, it won’t be because you chased it. It’ll be because you stayed.
My journey started grand, a post a day (or so I thought). I managed 12 articles in 12 days before that train screeched to a halt. Life got in the way. Quality too. I didn’t quite like the way I’d said things, but the articles were researched, so I left them be.
Not daily, then, but two or three posts a week was enough for patterns to emerge.
The subjects that got me up at night – to write – began revealing themselves. Sure, Geekist is rather self-incriminating in that sense. One look at the name tells you something about the subject matter.
But still, it’s a broad term and what exactly entailed “Geek” was what I needed to know. But that didn’t come with planned posts.
It came with written posts.
Even if you didn’t have the faintest clue what that is, write about anything. In fact, I’d argue that you should start with everything.
Pick a name that means something to you, but leaves you room to wander. Anything to avoid that ridiculous thought:
“Ah. I can’t write about that, this isn’t the place.”
Well. Where else exactly?
But let’s get back to what I had originally intended to say. Yes. I digress… sometimes
I outgrew Hashnode. It was simple and elegant, but the writing had grown into something that warranted a little method in the madness.
And I did make that journey. From Hashnode to Headless Hashnode & Eleventy and eventually PayloadCMS. Where did I end up?
WordPress. Yep. WordPress. After all that.
And here I am, writing this on my phone, using a WordPress client that had been available all along. Quite the pilgrimage, huh?
Yeah… it’s just words again, but this time they mean a whole damn more.
