Hello world, meet my first blog post

Imposter syndrome and the birth of Weekenddive

Though this headline might sound like a compelling title for the next Harry Potter book, it’s actually the origin story of Weekenddive. Feeling like I’m not good enough to write about anything led me to the decision to start a blog separate from my portfolio. A separate blog allows me to pretend like this is a playground for me to learn how to write compelling content.

But let’s start at the beginning. If you have spent more than 2 minutes on the tech-side of Twitter you’ve most certainly read a ton of tweets containing something like:

• “You should build in public”
• “Every developer needs a blog”
• “Blogging changed my life and now I earn 8 figures a month”

Of course, not having a blog, I worried I would be left behind. No 8 figures a month for me. And every time I considered starting a blog I got stuck on overthinking. I didn’t have anything to write about and everyone wrote so much better than me. Plenty of reasons not to start!

So after wanting to start a blog for over two years I decided to remove everything that adds pressure. I would make a blog that’s not connected to my portfolio, I can write about anything and I don’t care about reader numbers. No pressure, only fun. And thus, Weekenddive was born.

The biggest challenge: naming things

If you’re a developer you’ve run into this problem a thousand times: naming things. If you’re not a developer, imagine having to come up with unique names for arbitrary things at least 100 times a day. Anyhow, naming things is difficult, as I also experienced when trying to name my blog.

I started with some more tech-centered names. Considering every wordplay on the words tech, code, programmer, developer, etc.

But since I decided I can write about anything, naming my blog something tech specific didn’t feel right.

I tend to take massive deep dives into subjects when I start researching something. When I was thinking about starting a blog I had spent the whole weekend researching everything Oauth and authentication simply because a small hobby project I was building required user accounts.

The astute reader can, by now, guess how I came up with the name Weekenddive. “Weekenddive” is a small inside joke because I can spend whole weekends deep-diving into whatever. But now, instead of keeping it to myself, I’ll start sharing my findings with you, my dear reader.

Is a blog with one post really a blog?

Many a blog has been started, got its first post, and then died by inactivity. I remember my first portfolio, it had a blog section with only one post promising that I’ll post regularly. Bold as I am, I’ll promise the same for Weekenddive.

However, this time I come armed with a plan. I’m currently collecting a list of subjects I want to write about and I’ll augment the list with cool things I encounter during work or leisure time. I aspire to write a post at least every week. So if you have a subject you want me to write about, shoot me a message on Twitter @Larsv94

Not every post will be publishable but with this system in place, I’ll at least start writing. And even if a post is a dud, it still adds to my writing experience. Spoiler: I’ll probably go into more detail about why I use systems instead of goals to further my plans.

And with that, I’ll conclude my very first Weekenddive blog post. I’m excited to share more with you. See you in the next post 🙂