Disclaimer: there are emotions in this post. Gasp!
I'm currently participating in a month long blogging challenge and to be honest it's a bit draining. I love challenges. They could be anything from running a marathon to writing a book but I have to feel like I'm growing or contributing to the world. I have written a few useful posts (1 & 2) that I've been meaning to write for a while but sometimes I feel like I'm posting just to post and that really bugs me.
It's Not About Software
I love my company because we make tools that help people make money online. We can give people so much power and customization. Every time I see an entrepreneur setup a WooCommerce shop I'm ecstatic. I love that people can make a living off of the tools that I help produce.
So many people care about the particulars: the code standards, the syntax, the language, the unit tests, and on and on and I care about those only so far as they help me make better tools. If we could make better software with a slang Klingon JavaScript offshoot language without any unit tests or code standards I'd do it. Software isn't valuable unless it helps people. If you can make make the tool better so that it helps more people that should be your goal. The particulars are only there to help you make better tools. If you obsess over the tools you might not see the forest through the trees.
What I Want to Write
I haven't figured out what I want to write about. There's a gazillion issues in this world and all of them are important. I like empowering people, I want people to take chances, I want people to be financially stable, I want people to have loving relationships, I want people to understand how to communicate to get through struggles, and I want people to break out of their shell and do cool things.
I have technical knowledge about e-commerce which makes it pretty easy to write about that topic. It's been a good place for me to start but everything grows and changes. I want to break out of just e-commerce. I just don't know where to start. Do I keep expanding on ideas here? If I do write about happiness, or entrepreneurship, or love, will I lose focus here? Will people not understand what this site is about?
Truthfully, I think the best thing to do is write the occasional off-topic post somehow related to my existing topics and see how they go. Write about them for a while and see how much I like writing about those topics. We'll see.
Image credit: Giphy