Recently a person on LinkedIn asked me this: “What made you get into blogging?“

This is not the first time I get this question. In most situations this would come from a coworker who saw my blog for the first time or it would come from someone on internet seeking advice.

The answer

I wrote my first blog post in October 2009. In the post I am talking about career aspirations, being pragmatic (though I probably meant ambitions) and about the intent of the blog to post technical findings in order to help people online. English is unbearable, but the post is ending with “I hope this will help you and me!” And it helped.

So far I have 317 posts and some 717 comments. I’ve got many “Thank you” comments for the things people were able to find on the blog helping them solve their problems. Some people know me because of this blog. Some have greater trust in me because of this blog, some are inspired by this little work of mine. Most of all, it always helped me get more contacts, including those by recruiters. I won’t have numbers, because people don’t always say “hey, I contacted you because I saw your blog and thought you can be a good fit for our team”, though this happens at times as well. Long story short, the blog was and is extremely beneficial to me.

So what made me write here in the first place? I think there were few factors. Blogging was very popular back in 2009 and many others were also writing. If you remember those times, everyone had Google Reader and was starting their day with going through recent posts. Though, the main factor that made me write was probably inspiration by Derik Whittaker with whom I had a chance to work. He was Microsoft MVP at that time (probably now as well) and was having huge influence over development teams he was dealing with.

Encouragement

I think inspiration and mentorship are things that help people who are just starting in their careers. Therefore I would encourage anyone who is reading this to start writing. It doesn’t have to be a public blog (though I would recommend). It can be internal company blog, it can be answers on SO, it can be great documentation at work, it can be a book you always wanted to start writing, it can be scientific publication. Really anything that you feel you are close to and where you feel comfortable starting. There are numerous benefits of writing, like building your brand, improving communication skills, organizing thoughts, learning through teaching. Let me bring one quote from a book I read not too long ago:

The act of writing is a good example of metacognition because when we think about composing sentences and paragraphs, we’re often asking ourselves crucial metacognitive questions: Who will be reading this? Will they understand me? What things do I need to explain? This is why writing is often such an effective way to organize one’s thoughts. It forces us to evaluate our arguments and think about ideas.

Learn better by Ulrich Boser

Another question

So that was the answer to the question on why I started blogging and what are some of the benefits of doing so. Here is a more important follow-up question to ask: “What made me stick to blogging?” And answer is – you! All the people who read this blog or who have read it in the past, those who comment, those who ask questions, those with whom I work or worked in the past. If not for these little inspirations from each one of you this blog would not exist for all these 11 years. Thank you!