I don't have writer's block in the traditional sense. But I do suffer from perfectionism in a big way. And this year that perfectionism kept 10-15 blog posts from seeing the light of day.
I've written before about my feelings around new years resolutions, but this year I think I would benefit from a few. The end of the year caught up to me in a rather aggressive way, and even my down time has been spent doing mandatory socializing with family and friends. There hasn't been much time to sit down and think about what I want to change about myself in the new year. With a little bit of quiet on a flight (to another set of social events), I narrowed in on one I didn't see coming: write more blog posts.
I don't believe I have much to add to the world with my words. They are, as the blog motto suggests, a bunch of nonsense, written and/or screamed into the void that is the internet. I know via the minimal analytics services that I use that people do come and see what I've written, but also that not many people do. I'm not even sure if my immediate family bothers to read them. It only takes one post on a topic you don't care about to get you to stop coming back to read a random person's thoughts.
But for whatever reason, I can't just put my own thoughts out there. If I'm talking about a headphone, or a keyboard, or even some programming language tools, I struggle to avoid other resources and reviews. Even if it would be better for the world to hear my unadulterated thoughts, I can't help but check for prior work. Maybe it's the long training of my education causing me to look for sources to cite, but I end up spending dozens of hours tracing through other people's thoughts on the internet before committing to writing my own.
At the end of that time, I figure out that someone else has written what I was thinking about writing and so I choose to just not write anything. That's going to change.
I have a whole list of things that I have reasonably well thought out opinions on, and a general life goal of being a better writer. So this year, I'm committing to writing more. With my wedding coming up and a whole new set of responsibilities at work, I don't think I can commit to any real schedule. But I can commit to keeping a more steady stream of thoughts coming to a void near you.
Here's to 2025, the year when I find my voice.