Starting a New Blog

Hello there, reader. My name is Mark, and I have a confession to make: I am a former blogger who abandoned my old blog years ago.

At the time, I had good reasons (or so I thought). Life got busy, I lost interest in my niche, I felt like I was shouting into the void... you know, the usual excuses. But deep down, I knew I had let myself down. I had invested time, effort, and maybe a bit of money into my blog, only to let it collect dust in the depths of the internet.

But fear not, dear reader, for I have decided to rise from the ashes like a phoenix (or maybe more like a mildly motivated squirrel) and start a new blog. And this time, I'm doing things differently. I'm building my blog with Next.js, a fancy JavaScript framework that I'm learning as I go. Why? Because why not, that's why.

In this post, I'll share my journey of starting a new blog after neglecting the old one for so long. So grab a cup of your favorite beverage (mine is coffee, by the way) and let's dive in.

Reflecting on My Old Blog

Before I started the new blog, I took some time to reflect on my old one. I revisited my old posts, cringed at some of them, nodded approvingly at others. I also looked at my blog's analytics and noticed that some of my posts still received traffic, even though they were outdated and poorly written.

That made me realize that maybe I had been too hard on myself. Yes, my old blog wasn't perfect, but it still had some value. And maybe, just maybe, I could learn from my past mistakes and do better this time around.

Choosing Next.js

Now, why did I choose Next.js for my new blog? Honestly, part of it was curiosity. I had heard good things about Next.js and wanted to try it out for myself. Plus, I figured that learning a new framework would be a good challenge for me and help me improve my coding skills.

But there were also practical reasons. Next.js is known for its performance, SEO-friendliness, and ease of use. It's also backed by a large community and has plenty of resources available online. And as someone who doesn't want to spend too much time tinkering with the technical aspects of blogging, that sounded pretty good to me.

Setting Up the Blog

So, I started building my new blog with Next.js. I won't bore you with the technical details (unless you're into that sort of thing, in which case, hit me up), but suffice to say that it was a learning experience.

I had to figure out how to set up a development environment, how to create pages and components, how to style them (I decided to finally use Tailwind for something), and how to deploy the blog to the internet. There were some hiccups along the way, but overall, I enjoyed the process of creating something new from scratch.

Planning the Content

Of course, building a blog is only half the battle. The other half is actually writing content that people want to read. And that's where I'm at right now.

I've been brainstorming ideas for blog posts, researching topics, and outlining drafts. I'm trying to strike a balance between topics that I'm passionate about and topics that have the potential to attract readers. It's a delicate dance, but I'm up for the challenge. I'm going to rewrite/repost some of the old post eventually too. In particualr the ones that still get a fair amount of traffiic.

Conclusion

So there you have it, my journey of starting a new blog after ignoring the old one for far too long. Will this new blog be the one that finally sticks? Who knows. But what I do know is that I'm excited to try again, armed with new skills, a fresh perspective, and a healthy dose of sarcasm.

If you're in a similar boat as me, I hope this post has inspired you to give blogging another shot. It's never too late to start over and create something new. And who knows, maybe this time will be the one that takes off.

So go forth and blog, my friend. And if you need any help with Next.js (or just want to commiserate over the challenges of writing on the internet), you know where to find me.