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Daniel Kluver

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Back to blogging

If you are someone who follows my life, or my blog, you probably noticed my "unscheduled blogging hiatus". If you are very curious, you might even want to know what happened. Well, as I mentioned in previous blog posts last semester I taught my first college level course. As it turns out that takes a lot of time and energy. On top of that, last semester I also tried to get serious about graduating soon. With all of this on my plate I decided to give up on blogging until things calmed down.

This blog post isn't really about that the stop. This blog post is about why I'm starting up this blog again. In the past few months I've came up with many reasons why I should (or should not) blog. After some thought I think I've reduced the list to two that will keep me going.

Its worth pointing out that this blog post isn't really about reasons why you, dear reader, should blog. This blog post is for me. This blog post is to remind me of why I decided to start blogging again and to try to head off any attempt to stop. That said, if what works for me ends up helping you in any way I'm happy to have helped.

1. Writing is hard

Writing is an essential part of my job, and I think I'm getting kinda good at it after five or so years. So why should I bother blogging? I should blog to continue developing my skills as a writer.

While I think I'm getting to be an OK writer, I know there is room for improvement. I'm happy with a lot of what written, but most of those papers only got where they are through a lot of work. I believe that ultimately, the only way to get better at writing is to write so that's the plan: use this blog as a way to write.

So that's the first reason; writing is hard, so I should blog to get practice.

2. Writing is hard

I've had many occasions to learn about how I approach any sizable writing project, and I've learned something about myself. Part of my "writing process" is about about a week of dragging my feet and not writing. During that week, nothing I can do can make me write anything worth keeping. It's like I have some inertia, once I start writing I can continue, but when I'm coming from a state of "rest" all the pushing in the world cant make me write.

So how do I avoid this? Never stop writing. Its a dirty trick really, if I never stop writing I should never have to start writing. Instead of "how do I start this?" I will have the easier question: "what I am I writing today?".

So that's the second reason; Its hard to start writing, so I should never stop.

That's it

There's a rule of threes when it comes to lists. If you end your list at two it sounds incomplete. So why stop at two reasons? There are other reasons I might want to write: I like when people read my blog posts, I like blogging because it helps me explore cool ideas, I think my online presence would benefit when I have some high quality posts on my website. So why don't I add them to my list?

All of my other reasons are perfectly fine reasons to write, but each one has stood in my way at some point. Any one of these reasons leads me to an expectation of quality: If I want people to read, I have to write well, if I want to explore cool ideas I have to think well, etc. This expectation of quality makes me second guess myself and my writing, which makes writing not fun, and keeps me from doing it. If I want to write, and I do, then I need to get rid of even the best reason to write if it has any chance of standing in my way. So long as I keep writing, I believe that all of my other goals will come later, if I keep writing soon enough people will read things, and soon enough Ill explore cool ideas, and soon enough Ill have a few "highlights" to direct people to.

With that, its back to blogging. For the next three months my plan is to get at least one blog post out a week.