A Problem of Motivation

Believe it or not, lack of material hasn’t been a problem. Lack of material I care about has been a problem. I’ve got twenty-some-odd drafts in various states of completion, and dozens more topic ideas written in a notebook. But I just don’t care enough about most of the topics to finish them, so I haven’t, and I won’t.

When I first started this site, I thought I would enjoy writing about personal development and especially personal finance. It turns out that I don’t. There are some personal development and finance topics that I have enjoyed (and will enjoy) writing about, but for the most part, I don’t have the dedication and desire to write about this stuff regularly. And that comes through in the writing. My posts about goals and finance and such haven’t been nearly as well received as my more off-the-cuff posts about programming, or resume tips, or even the secret. The truth is that posts that I wrote to be interesting were just boring. The posts I wrote because I was interested were fun.

Lack of Time

I frankly haven’t had a lot of time to dedicate to this site. Each post I put up takes three hours, minimum, and many of them take considerably longer. Maybe that means I’m a slow writer. Either way, it’s just too much time to put into posts I don’t care about.

I’m working a full-time job, and I’ve been enrolled in graduate classes constantly since I started this site. Those take priority over this site, and always will.

My girlfriend (now fiancée) has been living about seven hours away for the past year, which means I spend quite a few of my weekends traveling to see her. Other weekends are spent when she comes to see me. I also spend a decent bit of time on the phone through the week. This is not the primary reason I stopped posting, but it has contributed. My fiancée takes priority above this site. Way, way above this site.

I’m not looking to excuse the fact that I haven’t been posting. I’m just saying this is how it is.

What the Future Holds

So, we’ve established that I have neither the motivation nor the time to post here frequently. What does that mean for the future of this site? For starters, I’m only writing about things I’m interested in from now on. No more posts that I write just because I think others might be interested. I write for me. If others like it, great. If not, great.

When will I write? Who knows. Maybe once every week or two. Maybe never. I’m not going to make any promises about posting. Every time I see someone do that, they make themselves into liars by disappearing again. I’m not doing that. Without promising anything, I will say that my plan is to post occasionally, a couple of times per month, at most. So if you check in once in a while, you might might find some new posts. If we’re both lucky, they might even be interesting.

Once all the hubbub died down today, I hoped to put up a new post. Most of the day, I was busy with interviews. This afternoon, however, I had some personal downtime, so I thought I’d get something posted. Unfortunately, my blog had some downtime, too. The “9 tips” post made it to the front page of Digg News (post). The Digg traffic absolutely dwarfed the Reddit traffic. My host (Bluehost) has a 20% CPU limit which they were unwilling to lift, even temporarily, so my site was up and down (mostly down) for several hours. Still, even with the server going up and down, the site took in over 15000 visitors, not including the masses that received the “server down” message. The post finally slipped onto the second page, and my site came back up.

I have a request of the new readers: If you’ve got a host you love, please let me know. And let me know what kind of hosting plan you’ve got. I’ve contacted a couple of other bloggers to see what they recommend, but I’m interested in all the input I can get. I can’t really afford a dedicated server, and honestly, I don’t think I need it. I just want a host who can (and is willing to) bear me through any more traffic spikes. I don’t want my site going down every time I manage to post something that people like. It might never happen again, but I’d rather be prepared, just in case. It may turn out that I just have to move to a more expensive package (with Bluehost or elsewhere), but I want to hear others’ experiences first.

I’ll try to get back to my regular updating now. Thanks, and welcome, to all the new readers. I hope you enjoy what you’ve read so far, and I hope you’ll enjoy what I post in the future. (Topping the “9 tips” is going to be hard.)

I’m also always open for reader suggestions/comments/whatever. Please, feel free to leave a comment on any post, or email me, if you prefer.