Posted Jan 31, 2021
Author’s note: this blog post has been migrated from a previous version of this blog project, about 2 years later, during the process of rewriting the blog from Gastby to Astro.
Wow, would you look at that? It’s only been a year, a month, and 23 days since my first commit in the course of building this blog, and I’m already writing up some ~ actual content ~ to live here? Wild.
(Though tbh, randomly generated hipsum may be better writing than whatever I’m about to churn out 🤷🏻♀️)
There are any number of reasons.
On the surface one can see that, as with most side projects, I got excited about it for a while when I started building this bad boi, and then over time my interest fizzled and I more or less forgot it existed. If you ever bother to check out the commit history (I mean, why would you? I’m about to tell you the important part anyway), you’d see I would remember this project existed, make a half-assed change or two, and then forget about it again every few months for the last year. That’s the simple answer.
Like…never.
As I believe is the case with an increasing number of people both in and outside of the tech field, I suffer from a debilitating case of impostor syndrome. It never allows me a moment’s peace. Everything I say, post, write, interact with, or create, I constantly compare with the work of others, against which my feeble attempts at contribution seem laughably pathetic.
Truth be told, I even started writing this post a month ago, and then decided it was stupid and narcissistic to think someone else would give a shit, and closed the window in frustration. Thinking about it made me feel guilty and cowardly, and was the impetus for thoughts like: why can’t I just post something, even something short and meaningless? why do I even want to post something? am I just an attention-seeker like my high school ex-best-friend would say? who would care what I want to say? how much will my feelings be hurt when nobody reads it or cares? why do I let myself care what other people do or say or think?
…and so on.
Not to mention that, as a developer, I know very well my little page is not well-optimized, not cleverly leveraging new tech, not sleekly designed. I’m afraid of posting something here because it feels like that would somehow legitimize it and perhaps send a message that I think this is code of good enough quality to be “done”, to be shown to the world. It isn’t. I have a backlog of about a billion things I’d like to add, or refactor, or understand better, or redesign (for the millionth time and probably still not be totally happy with it).
The longer I push this off, though, the harder it will be.
I’ve been reading quite a few self-help-style books (I know, barf) and some of the most useful advice I’ve read there is to just do it. Just do something. It doesn’t have to be ground-breaking, or even good, to be progress. I don’t even have to like it or feel good about it for it to be a step closer to where I want to be. So here I am, about to press “post” on this little meta-blog/stream-of-consciousness ramble.
Before I do, though, I have to say that I’ve been so inspired by people in a few areas—namely in the Blogging for Devs community and email course by Monica Lent, and in the almost-never-tech-related newsletter of my developer friend Robin, which you can find here. Seeing other members of the tech community talk openly about their motivation, their wins, their learnings, and whatever other topics about which they are passionate is incredibly cool. It makes me feel as though I, too, am allowed to write something on my little corner of the internet, even if it’s just for the sake of writing.
Well, I don’t know for sure what I’ll be writing about! Considering it’s still lockdown life over here, probably books, podcasts, home workouts, and food. But whatever it ends up being, I promise, forthcoming content will be less meta and more…content-y. (I would say contentful but I don’t wanna get hit with a copyright claim 😏)
If you want to get in contact with me…well, I haven’t built a comment section yet (😅🙈) so your best bet is to find me on Twitter instead 🐦
And peep pinned tweet—almost a year ago, still relevant 💀
Ciao for now,
Jillian