1. Process: I usually write about things that interest me or things that I think will be useful to someone else. For example I have a series of articles that

1. Process: I usually write about things that interest me or things that I think will be useful to someone else. For example I have a series of articles that supplement an existing learning tool for a popular programming language. I wrote the articles as I worked my way through the tutorials as a way to solidify my own comprehension. 2. How I got started: I used to write a pseudonym blog on a subject that was controversial at the time but no longer is. That was with Blogger. I haven't touched in a decade but it's still out there. For my blog under my own name I set up a WordPress site with Bluehost initially because it was easy and inexpensive. The low cost hosting on Bluehost leaves a lot to be desired and I eventually migrated to my own self-hosted solution. My self-hosted solution works well, but every now and then there is an issue to troubleshoot. Most people will consider my self-hosted solution to be overkill and I can't really disagree. I used a small Kubernetes cluster on Digital Ocean. The setup was easy enough. But I already had a lot of Kubernetes ops experience so there wasn't much of a learning curve. I would not recommend this to others. My reason for doing this is that my blog is just one of the apps hosted in the cluster. I kind of use it as a show piece for my work. The hard part is when things go wrong. It can be kind of stressful to know that you traffic is suffering because of an issue that you are trying to resolve. Luckily, I've never had a traffic interruption to my blog, but I've borked things up with other apps a time or two. 3. Staying Motivated: I'll be honest this part is difficult. I really don't have that much content. I posted my 49th article yesterday and I've been at it since 2016. Some years I only published a couple of articles. So far I'm at 44,936 words total. I try to focus on quality over quantity. I write some short posts but usually my posts are 1500 words or more. One thing I do is write down ideas for blog articles in a journal. Every now and then I actually write one of those. I have far more unwritten articles. 4. Struggles: Since my blog is under my real name I find that I am much more self-conscious compared to writing under a pseudonym. I generally tend to be selective about what articles I share because I don't really care for getting lit up by rude comments on social media sites. I'll usually try to seek out feedback in niche areas and small groups before I share with a larger audience. I'm always surprised by when an article becomes popular and I've had it happen a couple of times. It's always nice. I'm also generally selective about what topics I'll write about. I rarely write opinion pieces or about controversial subjects because I don't want a potential employer to get the wrong idea. When I do I am careful about the language and tone that I use.