Photo credit to jacktlin
In the early years of the web (circa 1994), I published a web page with a list of my newly discovered favorite web sites and maybe an article or two. I was the first at my university to have a personal website.
The very first few personal websites at the time consisted of a list of links to their most recently found favorite sites. There were a few who was journaling on the web but there weren’t many. I remember following the journals of Justin Hall and Meng Wong. To me they were the early bloggers (the term did not exist at the time) – doing it in pure HTML and maybe some Perl scripts for automation and efficiencies.
Later on in life I started a personal blog that I co-authored with my wife specifically for family and friends. The url was hidden from the world – it was much easier to do so during that time (circa 2000). I wrote a blogging software to facilitate that. Incidentally, around that same time Moveable Type was created and open sourced and Wordpress was starting to gain momentum. I did not seize the opportunity but that’s another story.
We blogged to a private audience of friends and family for a few years and later stopped as life got too busy – mostly we got lazy.
Around the beginning days of JRoller and Java Lobby (circa 2002), I started blogging to the general public through FreeRoller. It was a service that hosted JRoller blogs for free.
I wrote a series of posts about Java and Javascript. While I had a decent amount of readers, It only lasted a few months. I was not consistent and never made time for it.
My blogging has always consisted of status reports and/or how-to articles. It was rarely about my thoughts or ideas.
As an introvert, publishing my thoughts openly to the world has always been a little bit intimidating. By doing it, I am revealing parts of me and overtime all of me. In a lot of ways I feel naked every time I do so or attempt to.
I feel there are opportunities lost.
I wish to change that. Here’s why:
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It’s a way to connect with like minded folks from around the world.
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It forces me to think through and sanitize my thoughts.
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If I think about something a lot, I might as well write about it and share.
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It’s a way to gather feedback on ideas and thoughts. Helps me keep an open mind and I am likely to learn something.
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It improves my ability to communicate.
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The ability to put thoughts into words efficiently and effectively is something I wish to master.
Lately, I’ve been publishing my thoughts in short blurbs to a small circle of friends on Facebook. It is time I publish more than short blurbs and it is time I publish to the world. It is outside my comfort zone and that alone gives me reason.
It is time I get naked.