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[tazimhasan]

“Add life to your days, not days to your life.”

[tazimhasan]

My journey to becoming a blogger

Like many, I write as a hobby. Even though I’m not that good at it, I’ve been writing in my diaries for over 5 years now.

Personal journals, short stories and documenting the process have been a part of my daily routine for more than 5 years. These always helped me get to know myself better and recall exactly what I had for breakfast.

Neil Patel's blog, Nerd Wallet, Nerd Fitness, The Art of Manliness, CoinDesk, and some others on Medium have been my favourite blog pages for a long time.

I've always wanted to start my own blog page and share awesome stuff I know but never had the motivation to do so; I just kept making excuses every single time.

Then, about a year ago, COVID started to rise in my town, and many people started losing their jobs because of that. 

Now, I come from a middle-class family in a nation that's still being developed. We are doing really well here, but I wouldn’t say we are completely free of all our worries.

So, the situation above wasn't that far away from us.

That's when I really started to think about it.

As covid rose, lockdown started, leaving no way for me to go outside or even to school.

This sudden change in lifestyle really made me glued to the screen all day, scrolling social media and playing video games.

And blogging just slipped past my head for a while.

But soon, it hit me again—starting my own blog page, doing something productive with my time instead of wasting it.

And so I finally decided to step out of my cave, face these doubts I’ve had in my mind and do what I’ve always wanted to do for so long.

Out of all the decisions I made, this has to be the biggest and probably the best one yet, who knows?

Let me show you:

What would others think?

I know, everybody has thought about it loads of times and some are probably thinking about it right now.

But of course, deep down, we all know that they don't care or ever will until you actually manage to bell the cat.

I used to think about others too—what will my friends and family say? What if others at school make fun of me?

But then I slowly started to realise that the number of people in my life who think about me on a daily basis is on average every 5 in 0. 

Except my parents.

The few people whom I told that I was gonna start a blog page and write about things said nothing as I thought they would; they were just chill about it.

 And they probably forgot about it by now.

Take this story from "Psych Central" for instance:

"While seeking approval from others may be inevitable, problems may arise depending on how far one goes down that road. When caring how other people perceive us interferes with our own intuition, that’s when you may need to simply follow your heart and do what you feel is right. If you find yourself biting your lip from saying a quirky comment out of fear that others will raise their eyebrows in judgement, maybe that’s a time to try to bury that mindset and just be yourself." - taken from this article

In the end, whatever anyone is saying to you, remember that you're the only one who knows what's actually the best for you, so don't let others judge you.

What should I write about?

Chances are, you've probably come across videos or blog posts starting with a title like this:

"30 Day Weight Loss Journey: Before and After!"

"I tried the most productive daily routine for 30 days—here’s what happened."

"Weight Lifting Transformation: Day 1–30"

Many people post videos and posts online sharing their experience with a certain habit, career path etc that they’ve tried and how it affected them.

You likely haven’t done this kind of work before or haven’t tried this habit yet.

But many others have, wouldn’t it be interesting to know how they did it?

And you can tell by their view count that other people find it very interesting.

Whether you want to try out the habit yourself or not, there’s always some curiosity everyone has about new things.

And this curiosity never ends, even if we already know about that particular habit.

For example, I’ve been working out for the past 6 months. And in the meantime, I’ve read hundreds of articles about fitness and made many changes to my routine based on those articles.

It's not like I change my routine every time I see something new, but I still read them anyway.

Who knows, maybe I am doing this exercise wrong and need to be corrected before I badly injure myself or something like that.

Ultimately, what I mean is,

All these Behind-the-Scenes and Transformation videos and articles online are getting millions of views daily because people are very interested in knowing how things are really made and what happens behind the curtains.

So, that’s why I decided that I am gonna document my journey on my blog page and share my experience with all the people around the world who want to know how to get started in starting their own blog page and writing online.

Why would anyone want to read my blog posts?

I don’t have any experience blogging or writing online; I am a total beginner, and so why would anyone want to read my blog posts?

When they can just read other bloggers out there with way more experience and a larger audience than me?

This makes sense, but,

This is actually the reason why someone might prefer reading my posts more than other experienced bloggers out there.

This is something known as "The curse of knowledge"

It’s when you become so good at something that you forget what it was like to be a beginner.

Most people, when they start to pursue something new, don’t have any prior experience about that topic and often get stuck because of that.

That’s when they start to look at others who are on the same path as them and find out what they did in that situation.

Now, skimming through a bunch of articles at once can be frustrating.

And since not everyone has the same level of understanding, a good amount of those articles won’t really come in handy.

And not to mention, writer’s block.

It happens to every beginner and is easily one of the main reasons why many people quit writing.

It makes you feel unmotivated and uninspired to begin because of doubts in writing itself and if it’s really the one for you.

This is why many people want to see an actual beginner do it.

Seeing a seed slowly grow into a tree can help overcome many of these insecurities and doubts they have in mind.

Of course, to succeed in writing, you have to learn from professionals too. Reading articles from experienced writers can help you a lot in this field.

But sometimes, a beginner can also be your favourite choice because they can explain it to you better than someone else and with real-time evidence.

How do I write a blog post?

As I said, I've been journaling and writing short stories in my diaries for more than 5 years now.

But I still felt like my writing wasn’t good enough for this.

I started writing multiple drafts and just scraping them before I even finished a page.

And I wasted a good amount of time doing just that. And this got me nowhere.

But then I finally realised that, "Writing is not about perfection"

If you keep thinking your ideas aren’t good enough, you’re just going to lose motivation.

Instead, the best thing you can do is just go for it and begin to shape your ideas, one at a time.

Then edit your drafts later.

So, I stopped looking for perfection and started to actually finish my drafts. Doing this helped me progress a lot in my next drafts.

Not gonna lie, the first few drafts came out as nothing as expected.

But it was still way better than the ones I wrote before it, which barely had a page in them.

Another thing that helped me overcome this problem is practising.

I would write at least one article every day.

This took me anywhere between 2-5 hours and sometimes more.

This way I couldn’t make any excuses and had to finish it on time, even if I didn’t "feel" like it.

Another thing to keep in mind about writing is that you can’t judge your own writing skills.

The only way to find out how good you really are, is by publishing content online and having others rate it.

So, even if you think your writing is bad, keep posting on your page and revising them as necessary based on the feedback you receive from readers.

Conclusion,

Thanks a lot for reading!

All these questions, doubts and excuses later, I finally managed to publish my first blog post online!

This took me way longer than expected but taught me many valuable tips along the way.

Now keep in mind that this isn't just my start—but many more who want to start their own blog page.

So, what’s holding you back?

Let me help you in the comments below!