Three months of blogging

Nov 10, 2014

This will be my third monthly review. Yet again, I am going to look back at the last month and create a plan for the next one.

A better spread of topics

For the first month of this blog, I wrote mostly about programming topics. For the second month, I switched to writing mostly about personal topics. In my previous monthly review, I noticed this. I set myself a more specific schedule in order to focus my writing on a better spread of topics.

I'm very pleased with every post I've written over the last month. I notice that most of them were about the major experiences of my life so far. The reason for that is that I was in the process of writing my CV and realised I had no evidence to support my claims. Most of what I've written this month was written to support the main points of my CV.

Last week

Overall, the last month has been excellent for me. However, the last week has been an exception.

Last Monday, I wrote a specific plan. I said I wanted to "Look at job ads and agencies and identify several places where I would like to work". I also said I would do one Pomodoro on the task every day.

I made it the first two days before realising that it really wasn't getting me anywhere. I already know the exact type of job I want (web development, matching my existing skills). I also know that there are many such jobs available. What I really need to do is get to the point where I can actually apply for them.

There are still a few things to do before then:

  1. Convert my CV to PDF for sending with applications
  2. Write a covering letter
  3. Make my blog more presentable (currently the good stuff is too hard to find and the home page isn't very helpful)

I really should have just started on the above list but instead I ran into another problem. That problem was The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. It was released Tuesday night and I've spent far too much time playing it over the last week. I managed to stick to my blogging schedule but I didn't get much else done. I definitely regret spending so much time on it. I'm pleased to say that I feel like I'm over it now. I might play it occasionally but I'm not going to obsess over it like I have this week.

Focus for next month

Last month, I mostly focused on writing about my past experiences. However, I've now written about most of them. I have a few more left but not enough to continue for another month.

The obvious focus for this month is the same as for last month: getting a job. I certainly made some progress last month with writing my CV and writing about my previous projects. I still could have done more.

However, I still don't feel that writing about getting a job is really going to be that interesting. What I actually want to write about is programming. I want to continue learning about web development and then blog about what I learn.

For the next month, my main focus will be on getting a job. However, I will continue to write about programming on this blog as my secondary aim.

A new schedule

For my first month, I consistently published three posts per week. For my second month, I went down to two and then for my third month I went back up to three. It has been incredibly successful for me so far but I still want to try something new.

For the next month, I am going to publish one post every Monday (about my progress that week). Additionally, I will write about whatever programming projects I'm learning about. However, I won't schedule those. I'm going to try simply publishing them whenever it is convenient for me.

This goes against everything that has worked for me so far. However, I think it could be a good move. It gives me more flexibility to work on what is most important at the time. Of course, I could be wrong and it could be a terrible idea. However, I'm viewing it as an experiment. After one month, I'll see how it has gone and decide whether or not I want to continue.