“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
I’d planned to start my personal blog a few years ago, but it never materialized until recently. Even though I launched this blog just a few weeks back, you’d be surprised to know that this domain is almost two years old.
Yes, I did try launching the site a few times in the past, but there were a lot of hurdles I had to face along the way.
I even bought a hosting package and started working on the site about a year back, trying to put together a blog that I would be satisfied with.
But that never materialized either.
Starting a blog is a tricky field filled with many simple challenges. If you don’t learn how to tackle those challenges individually, starting a blog can get extremely impossible.
In my case, I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I didn’t have a solid vision of what I wanted to blog about. More importantly, I hadn’t figured out why I wanted to blog in the first place.
7 Main Reasons That Stopped Me from Starting a Blog
Uncertainty
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to blog about. I have varied interests: science, motorcycles, food, politics, religion, rationalism, movies, TV series, etc… How do I collate my opinion about all these topics under one single blog? The answer was simple, but the prospect of managing all that was scary.
You cannot be certain about anything in your life, including life itself. While planning is necessary, executing the plan is even more important.
If you’ve decided to blog, just start doing it. Make a plan and execute. Don’t wait for the perfect time. You will make mistakes, or hit a deadlock, but that doesn’t matter. Keep moving forward.
Time and Monetary Constraints
Launching a blog requires time. And if you want to do it with a custom domain name, it also requires money. Though I could’ve afforded it by making a few sacrifices here and there, I was hesitant. When you’re not sure about something, you tend not to invest either time or money on it.
Let’s make this clear: doing anything, whether you like it or not, requires time. So, lack of time being one of the reasons is a pathetic excuse. If you’re really passionate about doing something, you’ll find a smart way to do it.
As far as monetary constraints are concerned, there are many free alternatives to start blogging. WordPress.com and Blogger are amazing platforms to start blogging for free. Tumblr is a great alternative if you plan to post a lot of multimedia and short-form content. If you’re looking for a simple yet robust blog-publishing platform, check out Medium.
Fear of Rejection
I’ve always had a fear of speaking in public, especially around strangers. Publishing my thoughts and ideas on the Internet seems better in comparison, but there is still some uneasiness present. After I publish something, some many like it, a sizeable portion may find it acceptable, and the rest may perhaps totally dislike it. It’s the fear of rejection dangling in the back of your head that stops you from proceeding further. It’s frustrating and hard to ignore.
Even as I write this article, I’m constantly thinking about how the reader may react to every sentence I’m writing. Does this word fit in here? Are there any grammatical mistakes? Will I be mocked for it? Will other bloggers take me seriously and accept me within their fold? Will my readers like what I’m writing?
All these are legitimate doubts, but fearing for the worst constantly will eat through you. Always remember that even if the worst you’ve imagined comes to pass, you’ll still survive. Every failure is an opportunity to learn. Accept that and march on.
Procrastination
A disease bigger than whatever you’ve imagined it to be. You know for a fact that you need to do something, but your mind is searching for quicker rewards. Your rational self understands that you have to get to work, but your primal mind thinks otherwise. You know you want to start a blog and share all your experiences with the world, but the need isn’t strong enough; so you do something else instead. Something that gives you pleasure without much effort. This affects almost every part of your life.
The human brain is rigged. Even though we’ve come a long way since the days our early ancestors roamed the earth, our minds are still primitive at heart. Unless our survival depends upon it, we are not motivated enough to act on things that hardly matter.
If you are a student, then you know for a fact your future survival depends on how well you perform today. If you are working, then it is your bread and butter. Some people who are shortsighted take even these for granted. It’s a deeper level of procrastination that requires serious attention.
Distractions
This ties in perfectly with the previous point. Study and work are always an important part of your life, but it’s the unnecessary distractions that you should be more careful about. Casual browsing, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, TV series (Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones come to mind), webcomics (Oatmeal, XKCD and Cyanide & Happiness FTW), Whatsapp (messaging), Candy Crush (don’t try this), etc… are some of the things that I get drawn to while working.
Distractions are everywhere. They’re unavoidable. They’re fun; some are even educational. But you should be asking yourself whether you really need to indulge in them. Make a distinction between your pleasurable indulgences and productive hobbies.
I consider blogging to be a productive hobby. It helps me generate new ideas, think differently and come up with new thoughts. I also come across a variety of different topics and viewpoints while researching for my articles; this helps me learn something new every day.
Lack of Technical Knowledge
I had no knowledge of web development and technologies like HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, etc… Technical knowledge is not at all necessary to start blogging, but this was always at the back of my mind. There are easy ways to start a blog without knowing even the basics of web development, but my next point will explain why this is a relevant point in my case.
The Quest for Perfection
When the idea to start my very own personal blog struck me, I wanted to do it perfectly. A catchy domain name; an awesome logo that grabs everyone’s attention; a sexy theme that is clean and user friendly; stellar content that readers will appreciate and share; great social media integration; perfect SEO optimization; and much more. The goal is something so perfect that it’s almost unachievable.
Never forget: you can do anything, but not everything. And of those things you can do, you can only master a few. Being perfect at anything requires years of practice.
You have to start somewhere at some point of time; so why not now?
Maybe you won’t have a great logo in the beginning, but you can always change it in the future to something better. Perhaps you cannot get your hands on a domain name you want; so what? It’s a bit disappointing, but learn to live with it. You think you are not that good a writer, or don’t know how to express yourself. As mentioned earlier, it requires practice. How can you improve if you don’t even give it a try?
Yearn for perfection in everything you do, but don’t elevate your expectations to such an extent that you give up even before the start.
Before we finish, here’s a piece of gem from one of the most respected European figures of the 13th century.
“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
