Hello, (again) world!

Introduction

Hello, (again), world! This is yet again another one of my attempts at blogging.

In this first post, I want to go through my previous attempts at blogging, my reasons back then, and my reason for this latest attempt. Hopefully this can create a feeling accountability for me to keep writing new posts. Perhaps even inspire other people to put their thoughts out there and start writing.

History of my blogs

I first started a blog when I was in elementary school. I think it was on Blogspot and really easy to start. I was amazed that I can have my own corner of the internet. I was more focused on making it look good, with my limited ability to do so. I didn't have a clear reason to keep posting. I also didn't appreciate how hard it is to write something that people want to read. I really wanted people to be interested and read my blog, but I didn't put the effort to write good posts. The blog was abandoned after a few posts.

My second blog was created in high school. At the time, in Indonesia, there was a popular blogger that became famous for his book of compiled blog posts. It was a diary of daily life written in a funny and absurd way. It inspired me to start another blog. Several of my school friends also created blogs, a few of them still write until today! I admire the dedication. But most of them tapered of and abandoned their blog, including myself. I was writing about my life as a diary, with a pipe dream of being "famous". Guess what, it's not that easy. I think at that time I still didn't appreciate the difficulty of writing something that people want to read.

My third blog was created around the time that I moved to Australia for my studies. The move really moved me (pun intended). It felt scary yet magical. I was anxious about many things, but also felt really adventurous. Before I moved, I read several books on people's experiences studying overseas. It felt like something that I can write about too. I learned that it's quite difficult to write a compelling blog, but at the same time I felt like I'm up for the challenge. Except that my expectations were way too high. I somehow expect after one posts, two posts, or maybe three posts, many many people would read my blog. I understood that it was difficult, but I naively thought it wouldn't be difficult for me. I eventually lost motivation and the blog was abandoned.

Why I want to write now

So, I'm here yet again starting another blog. Over the years, I bought several domain names with my name in it, thinking that one day I would start some kind of personal website. Some of them has now been renewed for 5 years or so, becoming more and more of a waste if I don't use them. That's one reason, albeit not a big reason.

I recently watched a YouTube video by Ali Abdaal on income streams. One key message for that video is that to be "rich", you need to able to generate passive income, that is, income that is not directly tied to your time. That made a lot of sense to me. Your time is limited and so, realistically, generating income by getting paid by the hour has a natural limit. One of the ways to generate income is to create something "once" and selling it, that includes writings. Now, I'm not trying to monetise my blog, not now anyway. But I think it can lead to other opportunities.

Another one of Ali's video is about how everyone should have a website. Sharing about things that you are working on is very valuable. You can get people's feedback, start interesting discussions, or even simply just for accountability that you are indeed going to finish what you say you're going to do (like this blog). And it isn't only valuable for you, it can benefit other people as well. Even if you are not a subject matter expert on a topic, you might have 10% of the topic that people with 0% can benefit from. A beginner can easily teach other beginners.

The last reason of why I want to write now is: I feel like I now understand how difficult it is to create something that is "well-known". On the surface, I still do want to get "famous", I still do want to financially benefit from my writing, and I do want to get a lot of readers. The difference from before is that I do understand that to get the attention of 10.000 people, I need to start by getting the attention of 1. And it's okay to start with 0 readers, it's almost a given. It can only get somewhere if I stick to it.

What do I want to write about

My goal for each piece of writing is to help at least one person. If my blog can bring value to one person and it impacted their live for the better, then I'm satisfied.

For now, I think the area that would help me reach that goal would be my experience on immigrating to Australia, studying here, and working as a software engineer here. I have written down few topics:

The workplaces that I've worked at
The places that I lived in
Being interviewed and interviewing people

These are some ideas that are more broad, but still related to my professional experience:

How my measure of success change
The evolution of my social network usage
The types of books that I read
The evolution of my thinking on "side-hustles"

Finally, these are ideas that I think just would be a bit of fun, and showcases my hobbies:

Lessons from video games -- team-based, card games, story drive games, and so on
Mangas that I read
Personal tech that I've used (phone, laptop)

I will edit this posts and link the posts to the topics above. If you're interested in any of them and want to follow along, subscribe to my newsletter at the end of this page.

What format do I want to write in

On a high level, just like this post. I want to organise it into clear sections so that it's easier to digest. For writing style, I would just adjust and adapt as I go. I need to write a lot to improve my writing. The one thing I want to focus on is to just sound like myself.

It will be relatively long posts, around 1000-1500 words each. Although, I won't be strictly following that word count. Different topics require different amount of elaboration.

Why do I think it'll be more longlasting

I don't have a good history of keeping up with blog posts, so why do I think this time would be different? Well, because I understand how hard it is to reach the various measure of success. As I'm starting, I can't instantly get a lot of readers, get a lot of feedback, or any measureable "success".

I think having more life experiences helps as well. I can only write about my experiences after having interesting enough experiences. Time will tell if people find them interesting. But I certainly can imagine someone ten years younger than me, in a similar position to me ten years ago, would find at least one of these posts interesting.

Conclusion

The desire to write a blog has been into and out of my system for awhile. My thinking has evolved and (hopefully) more mature. I have a clear goal. I have a lists of topics that ready for me to write about. Here we go (again)!

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