The come back of Personal Blogging

Two weeks ago, I left my job at one of the most successful startups in France to become fully independent and start my own projects. Believe me, it was a tough decision to make. I felt it was really important to have somewhere to gather my thoughts about what was going on in my life, somewhere to share my passions, some kind of structure to ensure I make the most out of everyday. The most obvious solution was to start my own personal website 👩‍💻

Why I'm not using existing platforms

When I tell people I coded my own website, they all ask the same question: why don't you use ${insertAnyPlatformHere} instead ? Well there are several answers to this question.

• I don't feel like developing a real point of view on any of the main platforms : I don't really use Facebook anymore, except for Messenger and Events, Twitter is where I get news from. Besides, the format is much too short to really develop my points.

• I could always make Medium posts, but they all seem to be following the same pattern. It doesn't leave much space for creativity. Does the quote "The medium is the message" rings a bell ? I wanted to express my thoughts on something more flexible. Plus, I have to admit, I'm kind of getting tired of spending time to give free content to platforms. Especially when they require users to pay for it 🙈

A blog adapted to my objectives

When doing something, especially when it's something you care about, it's really important to keep your objectives in mind.

Personally, there are three reasons why I chose to have my own blog :

• As I said, the main reason is to take the time to write down what I'm doing, and how I'm feeling. The way I see it is more of a cathartic ritual than anything. I want to explain what I have on my mind in order to be able to structure my thoughts. Since I'm a freelancer now, people would think I'm doing it to get new customers, but it's not. I don't need thousands of claps on my posts (like on Medium), just the satisfaction to write down something I have in my mind that I wanted expressed out loud.

• Besides, I also want to have fun. Before becoming a developer, it would have been kind of scary to do something like buying a domain name, hosting my website, etc. As a developer, building something becomes easy, and you're not scared to learn. I wanted to enjoy that feeling of freedom, this "I know how to do that" feeling. "And even if I don't I will take some time, and I'll be able to do it".

• Last but not least, there is a lot of things I want to create right now. A personal website is a great place to gather everything in one place and share it with my friends, family and people I meet.

I'm not the only one out there taking this approach. I'm already following quite a few people who are doing it, developers or not. Before the big era of Social Media, personal blogging was one of the basis of the Internet. But one thing is sure for me: personal blogging is back 😎🚀