1) Does anyone really care about what I have to say

2) What I have to say has already been said

3) What I say may impact my job now or maybe in the future

4) What if i say something, wrong, controversial, or worse make me look dumb

5) What if my friends or family find out

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I asked my fellow tweeps why the first blog was hard to write, I got a couple that I want to share.

Britneymason @sforzley 1st blog post sets the tone.. 1st time your putting your thoughts out there. the 1st of anything is tough

And that is very true, and will come back to this reply later in the post. BTW, @Britneymason (Dave Peck) met him in person, stand up guy

Another reply

KristinKopp @sforzley Writing the first blog post is hard when we try to start at the beginning when we are already in the middle. Start where you are!

And that is also true, don’t get stuck at the beginning, and will come back to this tweet as well.

Being someone who tried this personal blog thing 3 times and aborted, I thought this time around, I should at least write a post on why its hard, Here goes

1) Does anyone really care about what I have to say

There are millions of blogs out there, understandably most I don’t know about, most have a compete.com rating of “unknown” and most go abandoned at some point. How does one find this needle (my blog) in the haystack (the blogosphere) and when they do, why would they care read it.

If i have 30 minutes to spare on blog reading, then there are tons of power bloggers, perhaps with more important things to say than me. And after posting a few, and not getting replies, then you got yourself a serious recipe for abandonment

And like Dave said, you gotta make a statement, I mean if your first one is not good, if you do one them “hello world” game over. (I hope my first post was ok). Dave let me know.

2) What I have to say has already been said.

Take a topic any topic, and google it, blogserach it, tons have been written about it, so what could I possibly say about it that is interesting. Well that is the trick i guess, if you don’t have anything different to say, then don’t say anything. But i would bet that you can always find a unique perspective on anything, because no one is the same and no one has the same life experiences. Take an iPod for example. What could I possibly say about an iPod, its been blogged to death. Well one thing i can tell you is that the iPod I have does not work well with the 1950 Moroccan music that i like to listen to once in a while (no i am not Moroccan, thank you for asking.)

Like Kirstin said, don’t get stuck in the beginning, start where you are and you will be fine

3) What I say may impact my job now or maybe in the future

What if my boss finds out, oh my, what if i write something they don’t like. What if I am looking for a Job and the hiring manager Googles me and finds my blog. What if they don’t agree or like what I have to say.

What I have to say about that is the following. I would rather hire someone with an opinion (be it different than mine) than hire someone who has none.

4) What if i say something, wrong, controversial, or worse make me look dumb

Saying something controversial as long as its not offensive is ok, I think that is actually a good way at getting comments back. There is no such thing as make me look dumb, nothing wrong about sharing opinion and experiences.

5) What if my friends or family find out

This one I have to admit is interesting for me personally, because for sometime i thought was an issue for many, was for me and for two primary reasons.

a) I don’t think many in my immediate friends and family get blogging. Why are you talking to yourself online? Does anyone answer you? is that not the definition of insanity, repeat a behavior and expect a different result?

b) Its has a bit of an awkward feeling, especially if your post is about them, example my twitter vs facebook post. Your thought on the topic is not exactly at par with those you don’t want to offend the most.