handoflixue comments on The True Rejection Challenge - Less Wrong
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I don't blog as much as I would like to. I would like to blog more because I think it would make me a better writer, because I sometimes have sufficiently interesting thoughts such that I would like to flesh them out in writing and/or be able to share them with others, and because it's a low risk method of decreasing my self-consciousness. Oh and also because sometimes keeping records of what I thought/did at particular times in the past is extremely useful.
Barriers:
1) It feels egotistical/arrogant to think that anyone wants to hear about what I did today and how it affected me, and other 'diary' type things. So writing about those things would be a waste of other peoples' time, and a turn-off for any future visitors to my blog. (Note: I do write privately about those things sometimes, mostly when something happens that has the potential to change my beliefs. But I often start out with such posts as public and then change them to private halfway through writing them, because the idea of publishing them makes me cringe)
2) My thoughts on non-personal topics are usually not completely thought out. Writing them in non-complete form ends up being rambly and inconclusive, which is again a waste of peoples' reading time. So I often decide to wait until I've thought about it in more detail, or to write a rough draft elsewhere before writing a polished post, and then never get around to writing any of it.
3) My writing style in general is often more long-winded and opaque than I would prefer. This causes a mild ugh field around seeing my own writing anywhere in the public domain, especially if it's more than a paragraph or two long.
4) I am self-conscious in general about exposing myself/my work in public. Blogging was supposed to help with this but I've actually gotten more self-conscious about it over time, not less.
Keep a public blog under a psuedonymn, where you post the ramblings, daily life, and so forth. Your friends might enjoy reading it, and it lets you practice writing. Whenever you write something particularly interesting on your personal blog, do a second draft that cuts down on the rambling and post it on your main blog.
This is largely what I already do (keep a pseudonymous public blog) but as I said, my self-consciousness about posting material there has increased over time. I have 'daily life' posts on it from years back that would make me cringe hard if I were to go and look at them.
Come to think of it, my self-consciousness is strongly correlated with the number of people that I'm not close friends with who follow my blog. So starting a new secondary blog would remove that barrier. Alright, I'm going to commit to trying to keep a primary and secondary blog for at least a month, and see how it goes.
If your blog has gained readers, that seems like a pretty good sign to me that you're not just wasting peoples' time.
Good point, and one I should remind myself of more often