It’s been a while since my last post — more than two and a half months. At first, I thought I’d only skip one post, but then I skipped another one, and another one, and here we are. So what happened?
The 3 dilemmas
I didn’t experience a series of bad days as my last post might have hinted — I’ve actually had a very productive period with some very interesting stuff going on. So that was not the reason for the radio silence. The main reason was that I was starting to have doubts about whether I really wanted to share so much of myself. I know it was a bit late for them after I’d already published 7 posts, and I’d decided in the first one that I wanted to tell this story, but I think it was at that point when I grasped the full implications of putting something on the internet.
It is there and it remains there forever, for anyone to see.
I think it was because I realised that I probably don’t know all of the people who read the posts. You see, Medium (the blog was originally published there) has some statistics that show where the traffic comes from. And don’t worry, I don’t see any names or other individual user data, so you’re perfectly anonymous in reading this, and you know more about me than I know about you, but I’ve recently started to realise that the web pages collect more data than I thought. Medium is no different here, and it tells me what are the sites that the people find my posts through. I shared the links to my posts on my Facebook and LinkedIn, and up to my last post, most people clicked from there. But after the last post, I started seeing more traffic directly from Medium. I’m not talking about a ton of traffic, more a click here and there, but the number was higher than before, and it made me wonder about who it was. And of course, there’s no way of knowing, so it could literally be anyone. I’m putting the words out there and have no control over who sees them or how they use them.
So this made me rethink the whole blogging concept. Am I revealing too much about myself and could it hurt me in the long run?
I decided I can’t really judge the first part objectively, so I talked to some of my friends and colleagues. And they told me they didn’t think it was too personal and that if I want to write a blog about what I’m going through, I have to include a bit of personal stuff anyway — my thoughts, some anecdotes, some info about the project — otherwise it would be too dull and there’s no point in writing it.
And the second part, I think I know how to answer. It’s not like I’m writing about something negative or claiming that what I say is the universal truth. I’m simply sharing my experience and my reflections and views — and I may realise that some of those were naïve or plain wrong sometime in the future, but they’re part of my current journey and they’re shaping me into the person I’ll become. I think my identity and my core values are pretty well developed, as I am almost 30, but I also know that we never stop learning, and that our views and perceptions change with each new experience. But I don’t think I’ll ever change so much that I’ll be ashamed of my current experience. So that’s settled.
But that wasn’t the only thing that was stopping me from writing. I was also seriously questioning if what I have to say is actually interesting. I don’t think I’m that interesting or special, and the world is saturated with information as it is. I don’t know how to answer that, other than with statistics from Medium, that (excluding the first post, which got a lot of attention), on average, more than 50 people clicked on my posts, and a fair number of them actually read through. I have also been invited to a few events to share my story before, for example, I was part of a ‘live library’ about women in tech a few months ago. So it must be interesting at least to some people. I don’t know. What do you think? I’d be really happy to hear some feedback, as I’m only seeing this from my perspective.
And say I continue to write — what exactly do I write about? Yes, the whole journey I’m on, but do I write more about general things that I’m learning, for example how to juggle between all of the projects that I’m currently involved in, and how to start promoting our project with no promotional materials, along with a bit of personal opinion, or do I also do more technical posts about game development, manufacturing, shipping etc., which is also a huge part of my experience? Because although those two areas are intertwined in what I’m going through, they probably have two very different audiences. I think people interested in the first, ‘personal growth’ part may be bored by the technical part of board game development, and someone interested in the hands-down technical posts may be put off by the abstract wandering through the landscape of my thoughts. And while I think I could find quite a few people interested in only one of the parts, I seriously doubt there is a large audience of people interested in both simultaneously. So I guess you could say my blog had a bit of an existential crisis.
I considered different options, from doing both post types and just not caring about the audience (way too inconsistent and I’d hate it if someone did it to me), to splitting the topics into two sub-threads (unfortunately, I don’t think I have time to consistently manage both), so I ended up not posting at all. Judging by the statistics Medium shows me, the posts about personal growth get more reads than the more technical ones, and I also enjoy writing them more, so I think I should go in this direction, and possibly post the occasional hard-core board game development stuff on the SnowBoardGames Board Game Geek profile.
Also … I needed a break
Aside from the 3 dilemmas, I think I was also a bit burned out. I was working continuously on the Hike! project since January, juggling work, Hike! household activities and climbing, and although I wasn’t alone, it still required a lot of time and energy. It started to feel a bit monotonous and repetitive. And I got to the point where my motivation for working on Hike! and Kickstarter dropped, and it was hard for me to clear my day-to-day to-do list, as there were plenty of other things to do.
So I took some time off and focused on other projects. I’ve climbed a lot in the afternoons, which paid off as I’ve climbed my hardest sports route so far, one I thought was a ‘once in a lifetime project’, and now I’m already looking for the next one. I’ve stood on my 3rd 4000 m peak, which was at the same time the first one where I felt great at the top. I finally bought myself an e-reader and had some time to read fiction. I’ve also been sick for two weeks and acquired a pretty bad photochemical burn caused by a pretty looking plant (the two events not related). And I took some time for my friends and family, making the most of the relatively covid-free summer.
And now I am back, rested and ready to rock.
The roadmap
So, where do we go from here? We are all-hands-on-deck on the Hike! project, and I am happy to tell you that the Kickstarter pre-launch page for Hike! A card-drafting racing game is live. This means that we’ve handled a ton of bureaucracy and the project has been officially approved by Kickstarter. So anyone interested in it can click on the ‘Notify me’ button to be notified when the campaign goes live. We are currently working on promotion and on telling people about Hike! as well as preparing to print a small series, to have a few physical copies of the game that we can show people.
And on the blog front, you can expect some more regular posts — I’ll post them Thursday afternoon European time, as before. My intention is to post regularly, but I might allow myself an occasional skipped or delayed post if my to-do list becomes too hard to handle. My first priority is still Hike! and hacking life, so I have to prioritise ‘doing something to push the project forward’ over ‘writing about it’, or I’ll soon run out of material to write about.
I’ll also allow myself some more freedom with the post form. For example, you may have noticed that up till now, all of the headlines were in the ‘Verb + ing something’ form, as I was trying to stress the importance of actually doing something and being proactive. But I’ve come to the point where I started to feel it limited my choices and expression potential, so from now on, I’ll drop that self-imposed rule.
So, now that I’ve decided to write more regularly, does that make me a blogger?
I guess technically you could say so, though I don’t perceive myself as being one. Maybe because writing a blog is only a minor part in the whole experience, and my primary focus is Kickstarter and Hike! and hacking life. And I’m still a bit unsure about dilemmas number 2 and 3, and it would seem more logical to me to maybe write a book once the whole experience is over and when I (hopefully) have something to show, or at least have the situation played out, instead of now that I’m tangled in the middle of it. But I know myself well enough that if I don’t post now, I won’t have the discipline to write my thoughts down as I have them, and once I come out on the other side, I’ll be distant from the experience both due to time that has passed and due to changes in my perception that happen as I learn new stuff and expand my comfort zone. So I think there is no way I would be able to catch the spirit of the whole experience if I wrote in retrospect.
So, I guess I’ll have a new post ready next week, and I hope you join me. 🙂
Cheers to blogging!
Nika
P.S. This post included quite a few dilemmas and questions, and I’d like to thank everyone who helped me resolve and answer them. And I’d also like to invite everyone, now and for the future, to let me know if you have any feedback or if you think I’m completely off in my assumptions. The communication is a bit one-way at the moment, and it is nice to hear the other side of the story too.
And if anyone is interested in the Hike! Kickstarter pre-launch, here is the link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1485795534/hike-a-card-drafting-racing-game-with-huskies