Blogging challenge update

The struggle is real
Published in 30 in 30 on Dec 21, 2024

This is day 15 of my 30-in-30 blogging challenge - officially halfway! I wanted to take the time to check in on my progress so far.

I won't lie - publishing every single day is extremely challenging. I've already published after midnight several times. To be fair though, my mental "day" ends when I go to sleep rather than at midnight - surely I'm not the only one!

Originally, I was hoping to write more programming content. I still have more programming content planned for upcoming articles, but it's less than I'd intended for two reasons:

  1. I'm not doing much recreational coding at the moment. My side hustle has been neglected lately, especially with so much time devoted to writing each day.
  2. I don't have many interesting opinions about code. I work with code every day, but that doesn't guarantee bites of wisdom or witty tidbits. Now that I'm in the habit of writing though, I'm going to work on capturing more of the interesting ideas I do come across, before they fade from memory.

My content so far has been a lot more varied than that, which I've enjoyed. It's interesting sharing stories with people; I love hearing people's own experiences when something resonates with them.

I realised early on that I've accidentally fallen upon a particular writing pattern - usually, the first half of my article is a personal story or anecdote about the topic, and the second half is some practical advice that I've learned. I'm happy to keep that format mostly, and I hope that people get value out of it. I don't think any of the "advice" I've written has been groundbreaking, but I've tried to bring niche advice and niche topics to wider audiences.

I'm expecting the second half of this challenge to be much harder, especially over the Christmas period. To get through it, I'm going to have to improve and adapt. That means writing in advance (spoiler alert, I'm already preparing content ahead of time) and writing shorter-form articles (I like the length I've been writing, but it's hard work!).

I hope you're enjoying this challenge. Please drop me a line if any of this resonates with you, or if you have some feedback for me!