Saturday, April 11, 2009

Each Journey Begins with One Step

To blog or not to blog. That’s been the question.

And it’s an odd one, at least for me. Those of you who know me are all too aware that I write a fair bit (some people would characterize the amount I write as a lot). At last count, I’ve published 20 books (co-authored with my wife, Loy Anderson), about 80 software courses, hundreds of magazine articles, and many Web articles. But I haven’t blogged until now (at least about technical issues, but that’s another topic for another venue).

It’s amazing, really, that it’s taken until now for me to place hands on keyboard and get back to a regular schedule of technical writing. Heaven knows I enjoy it. In fact, I consider myself an author first, before any other endeavor, though I technically spend more time writing code than writing about coding.

The real question is why haven’t I started before now. And the answer is simpler than you’d think. I didn’t want writing to become a chore.

Back in the days of Delphi Informant, and even before that, I wrote a regular monthly column. Monthly is nice. You get a whole 30 days to get your act together. And even if you wait until the last minute, once it’s done, you’ve got a breather before you need to get back to the keyboard and pound out another one. No, monthly is not a chore.

Lately I’ve been writing regularly for the Software Development Magazine, which is published by the Software Development Network, one of the larger European user groups, based in the Netherlands. That magazine is published four times a year. Again, not a chore.

My real worry was that if I started blogging technical material, I would commit to too frequent a cycle. And though that might work for a while, I would soon find myself worrying about scraping together enough time to keep the pace. Eventually, I would slack off, and this would lead to guilt, which would make matters worse.

Over time, I would occasionally post a new blog, and with each post, my shortcomings would be staring me in the face: April 2009 (8), May 2009 (6), June 2009 (2), September 2009 (1) April 2010 (1). It would be unbearable.

But I’m over it now. I’ve been on the blogging sidelines for too long, and I’m now ready to get into the game.

And, as so not to make it a chore, I am going to initially commit to a rather light schedule. I hope, on average, to post one to two technical blogs each month. Scattered between these will be the odd observation or announcement, such as the upcoming Multithreading Master Class that I am presenting with Marco Cantù as a Power Workshop at DelphiLive! on May 13, 2009 in San Jose, California. (See http://www.delphilive.com/ for more details. The Power Workshop description can be found at http://www.delphilive.com/conferences/delphi_live/workshops/.)

I have been looking forward to this. I hope you have, too.

Copyright (C) 2009 Cary Jensen. All Rights Reserved.