Cover photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
Hello World, Hello Dev! I'm Gervin and I have been a lurker here in dev.to since 2017 (I think it was still called Practical Dev back then?), around the same time I started my career as a software engineer.
Fresh from college, I was hungry for knowledge and immersion. I was really glad when I found this community. I never knew that there's so much more in software development than just knowing how to write code, and dev.to helped me realize that.
As one former colleague puts it:
Oh how wrong are you, my sweet summer child
Aside from reading lots and lots of articles here, I always dreamt of writing my own blog and sharing my thoughts with the rest of the world. I always enjoy discussing with my friends and colleagues about crafting software, so I thought maybe it would be fun too if I put them down in writing.
And so I made multiple drafts about different topics here and there but I ended up not publishing anything for 3 years. Most of which either went to the bin or were stuck in the eternal drafts folder haha!
What's stopping me?
Well I think there are two things: I'm lazy and there's this paralyzing fear of a blank canvas (or paper/editor, I guess)
Though I'm not proud, I'm not denying that I'm lazy as f*ck. I would always find some good alibi not to start something or avoid it altogether. Taking "minimizing the work that needs to be done" to the next level except in a bad way.
Then every time I get a sliver of inspiration to get things done, I feel like the blank editor is staring back at me pressuring me to write something perfect - words flowing with wisdom and expertise. But boy, I'm not a prolific writer and English isn't even my native language. How am I supposed to do this and do it well?
Yup, there's the alibi.
Getting over perfectionism
I've been called a perfectionist a handful of times, but never took them seriously as I always felt that I'm not doing good enough or perhaps they were just sarcastic. It was not until I came across this article (which was stuck in my reading list for so long, by the way), that I tried reevaluating myself.
humanparts.Medium
And to quote:
When a person fails to begin a project that they care about, it’s typically due to either a) anxiety about their attempts not being “good enough” or b) confusion about what the first steps of the task are. Not laziness. In fact, procrastination is more likely when the task is meaningful and the individual cares about doing it well.
Maybe it's in the nature of writing that you have to expose yourself and be vulnerable, for your thoughts are no longer only yours. So you'd want to put enough effort to it to make it factual and enjoyable to read. It's a part of you after all.
Perhaps, I have just been overthinking. And in my pursuit of writing good essays and articles, I forgot that all I really wanted is to share, discuss, and learn ideas with everyone else.
YOLO
So here's me attempting to get it going, starting to setup my profile and writing my first post. I'll try to stop being overly conscious and just put it out there no matter how short or long, good or bad.
Maybe I'll make mistakes, but those will also be precious learning opportunities.
Maybe I don't and everything goes well. Then I guess I'll just have fun writing again.
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