Achievement unlocked: One year of blogging. And now?
Tags: blogging, career, selfdevelopment, learning
Published: 2020-02-03 04:57:36

---
title: Achievement unlocked: One year of blogging. And now?
published: true
description: I wrote one blog post a week for one year. What did I learn out of this? Should I go on?
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/ghw74hxfthod789978iw.jpg
tags: #blogging, #career, #selfdevelopment, #learning
---


[Beginning of last year](https://dev.to/dvddpl/2019-agile-retrospective-how-did-it-go-with-your-new-year-s-resolutions-1bnb) I set myself the goal of running a tech blog, and writing one post every week.

This year is now over and according to [the stats](https://dev.to/dvddpl/what-are-your-blogging-stats-4ono) I wrote **54 posts**. (I am pretty sure I skipped a couple of weeks during my holidays but immediately compensated)


![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/b3zyz5vemfdhdbu95m3l.jpg)

What I liked at the beginning of this journey were [the _streak_ badges](  https://dev.to/badge/8-week-streak). It´s a small thing but sometimes they can give you the motivation to build the habit.  Gamification is important! There should be more :-) 
And I really appreciated the stickers Dev.to people sent me over Xmas.  It was a nice suprise! 

![Dev.to Badges](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/xt1c3jhofu8xa1ohs3sv.png)


## What now?  
#### Am I going to stop blogging now that my goal has been achieved?
Definitely not.

Writing posts every week, allowed me to 
- learn a lot
- consolidate my learnings
- give me the motivation to dig deeper into some topics

so I will definitely keep on putting my thoughts on _paper_ even though I will probably loosen up a bit the schedule (maybe 2 posts a months) and more importantly **focus on more technical posts** ( either more tutorial like or simply snippet/tips like ) rather than _philosophical/chatty_ ones.

Even though I noticed that technical posts get less traction I find them more useful as a reference for myself ( and others ) and as a picture of my growth path over time.

####Learning in Public
Another thing I want to focus on is [Learning in Public](https://www.swyx.io/writing/learn-in-public/). One of the reasons why I wrote few Technical Posts was that I did not feel _worth it_. I thought that to blog about something I should be the _expert_ on that topic. But I realized that:
- there are different level of expertise out there, and what could be very shallow/simple for me ( now ) could be difficult to grasp for someone that just started, so it could be beneficial for someone if I put my 2cents there as well.
- while writing an article about something that I tried out, or I am learning, I need to research a bit more and make things even clearer for myself, and if I wrote something wrong or silly or that I simply misinterpreted from the docs, I can be corrected by the readers (scary but useful!).


And anyway, even if the post will just a quick note for myself - for something I never really memorize ( like [this](https://dev.to/dvddpl/how-to-kill-a-node-process-5d13) ) it´s more useful and handy than the **huge messy word file** where I used put links to interesting articles, snippets and all sort of unordered things, plus:

- It's very nice when you google for something you don't remember.. and you find your own post.

> if someone at work asks you a question about testing a react component, then maybe you can share your answer in a public gist on GitHub and send it to your co-worker as well as twitter  [Kent C. Dodds](https://kentcdodds.com/blog/intentional-career-building)

- It's very handy when some colleague, asks something you just learned, did, or that you only know in your team, to post a link in slack ( i am not saying to refuse to help or to explain, it's just some more documentation to start with and it is [DRY](https://dev.to/dvddpl/strive-for-simplicity-2131): 

> You have a finite number of keystrokes left in your hands before you die.  [Scott Hanselman](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/DoTheyDeserveTheGiftOfYourKeystrokes.aspx)



----
If you want to know more about Learning in Public you can check out the video [here](https://dev.to/lauragift21/learning-in-public-ob2) and all the source links Gift Egwuenu posted.

Photo by [Annie Spratt](https://unsplash.com/@anniespratt?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on Unsplash