Blog For The Young Things

Why do we blog? Let’s skirt around the question of what a blog is and focus on why we even do this stupid internet-writing in the first place.

Lately, I’ve been struggling to get my blogging mojo back. Being self-employed strips away all of your defining characteristics. No job title, no company, no boundaries, no edges.

So who to write for? What to write? Where to write it?

At dinner with a close friend of mine (hi Ron!) we were chatting about what we’d like to do to help others and it suddenly struck me that my most popular posts I’ve written were the ones I wrote for young people. Popular in terms of traffic - but also popular in terms of people reaching out to me directly off the back of it.

Writing for young people!

Hot retweetshizzle. That’s the ticket.

I’ve been struggling to articule to myself why I was unable to write “interesting content”. Where were the posts I was writing that were on the homepage of Hacker News? Has the content muse deserted me?

No - instead my motivations were misaligned. I don’t have a ton to teach but also very few people are looking out for the next generation. Who’s helping them cope with beginning a non-traditional career? Who’s helping set expectations for working in tech? Who’s giving them a helping hand? Who’s writing about learning to code as a creative endeavour?

I recall starting my adult life - fresh out of university, staring bright eyed at the world and thinking to myself that the only thing I knew was that I didn’t want to work in the city through a “management training program”. But I had no idea what I did want to do.

So here’s me starting up the blogging engine. If you’re young and want advice email me. Or tweet at me and I’ll write you a blog post.

I’m sure there will be other posts I’ll write not specifically for young ones but it’s a focus I’m excited about. It’s a focus I think is important.