Restarting my blog has had an interesting side effect: once I got started, it became much easier to write and share more. This has been the case not just here, but also with my other, more technical blog. After three years of going round in circles, I have not only started but have also maintained rather good progress so far.
The biggest motivation to keep me going has been the feedback from the community. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting that much. It might have helped that at least four articles made it to Hacker News, and one even reached the top spot for a good couple of hours. To my surprise, people not only had very constructive discussions but many also reached out via email to thank me, correct some minor mistakes and suggested alternative approaches. This was the part I did not expect at all.
And it was the audience that changed my perspective - I guess the trouble with previous attempts was that I always thought of the wrong reader. When dealing with technical expertise, I often (if not exclusively) speak only with really advanced engineers (often contributors), and without realising it, I expected to target them. To somehow match their expertise. This is obviously super difficult, and producing content at such a level is very hard. Then there was the imposter syndrome. How can I write about PostgreSQL internals when I’m not even able to become a regular contributor? Or when I haven’t experienced dozens of deployments over 50 TB? Without realising it, these and other worries were holding me back.
The switch came with SQL/PostgreSQL related workshops I delivered in recent months. More I have focused on the explanatory narrative, more I become comfortable with it. And it was close to the role of trainer I enjoyed years back in London. But at the core I still believe starting one blog was the single decision that unblocked everything else. Starting and being consistent.