If one wants to write down thoughts, no computer is necessary. Keeping a journal with pen and paper has been a thing for centuries.
Blogging being less write-friendly? It can be as simple as writing a tweet, or editing a comment for HN. It doesn't need to involve git or hugo. You could use one of the big blogging platforms, and have no more than a login and some HTML text fields.
Blogging as pressure to improve your writing is real, and that's one of the reasons I blog.
I wouldn't call it scrutiny. It's mostly caused me to communicate and articulate my thoughts better, to the point where I'm misunderstood less often. Along the way, I realized that I left out important points, so I've gotten better at including them the first time.
Others? Only a handful of people read my blog, and most of them are my friends.
ELI5: Blogging seems to be more of an traffic-seeking endeavour than a personal writing journey. The mere fact someone might read it is an immediate stopper to the creative juices as it literally from the first word is blasted with the "what if someone reads this" and "This needs to be so original".
If one wants to write down thoughts, no computer is necessary. Keeping a journal with pen and paper has been a thing for centuries.
Blogging being less write-friendly? It can be as simple as writing a tweet, or editing a comment for HN. It doesn't need to involve git or hugo. You could use one of the big blogging platforms, and have no more than a login and some HTML text fields.
Blogging as pressure to improve your writing is real, and that's one of the reasons I blog.
So you need the scrutiny of others to feel pressured to write better?
I wouldn't call it scrutiny. It's mostly caused me to communicate and articulate my thoughts better, to the point where I'm misunderstood less often. Along the way, I realized that I left out important points, so I've gotten better at including them the first time.
Others? Only a handful of people read my blog, and most of them are my friends.
That's fair, I'm not trying to belittle people that like to blog just for everyone's information.
ELI5: Blogging seems to be more of an traffic-seeking endeavour than a personal writing journey. The mere fact someone might read it is an immediate stopper to the creative juices as it literally from the first word is blasted with the "what if someone reads this" and "This needs to be so original".