Writing Is Hard

I didn’t blog a single time in 2023. In fact, I haven’t blogged since June of 2022.

I kept telling myself “hey, I should write something” but never did, and then enough of the year passed that I decided to just lean into it and make 2023 the year I took a break from writing.

It’s a Slow Process

The thing is, writing does not come naturally to me at all. I’m a terribly slow writer. Words don’t flow out of my brain, they just sort of… fall out like a game of Tetris where none of the pieces are stacking well. It’s hard to make them stack well.

So when I’m writing the sorts of long-form deep dive CSS articles that I tend to write, it’s an incredibly laborious process. And that’s just the writing part. There’s also the research, experimentation, coding up the demos, and testing. These types of blog posts typically take me about a month to finish, sometimes longer.

Yeah, Burnout

I love web development. It’s amazing that I can have a job doing something I enjoy so much. It’s also my favorite hobby, because, again, I love web development. There have been many times where, after a hard day of web development, I’d find myself relaxing with… more web development.

I’ve created a life for myself where my day job is web development, I run a web development blog, and I have multiple web development side projects. You can see where this is going.

Burnout is inevitable. When it hits, I have to prioritize what I put my energy into. Naturally, I prioritize the thing that pays the bills, putting the rest aside so that burnout doesn’t swallow me whole.

And that’s why I didn’t blog a single time in 2023.

I’m Not Done

This isn’t “goodbye” or anything like that. Just sharing my headspace. I still love web development, in case that wasn’t clear. I want to get back into blogging, but in a way that doesn’t consume too much of me. Maybe I’ll try writing more short-form blog posts.

We’ll see!