How much is too much

As a per­son­al blog­ger most­ly writ­ing about myself, my biggest dilem­ma is to decide how much is too much. I often won­der if I am expos­ing myself too much on the inter­net. Until recent­ly, I did not even dare to have my pho­to on this blog. I am cer­tain­ly not ready to post my fam­i­ly’s pho­tos here. I may, in the future, but for now, I play safe. And I don’t know what’s the harm with shar­ing per­son­al pho­tos on the blog. I still pon­der.

On the oth­er hand, I love writ­ing. Writ­ing well is impor­tant to me. I write a lot in my day job about soft­ware and tech­nol­o­gy. I believe no one can prac­tice enough of any skill, let alone writ­ing. So I use this blog to prac­tice a dif­fer­ent form of writ­ing. It is easy for me to write about myself. Which is what I do here.

I could write pri­vate­ly. But I enjoy read­ing per­son­al blogs of nor­mal peo­ple around the world shar­ing their day-to-day life. I find those per­son­al blogs far more enjoy­able to read com­pared to read­ing some­thing like lat­est iPhone or movie reviews or even news. Per­son­al blogs are enlight­en­ing and at times inspir­ing. This, com­bined with my reluc­tance to be a pas­sive con­sumer, makes me blog about myself. Although, deep down I am afraid of mak­ing myself vul­ner­a­ble to judge­ment.

Okay, Seth Godin is not your ordi­nary Joe but I found this inspir­ing quote from his 6000th blog post on his per­son­al blog that he pub­lished today:

It does­n’t mat­ter if any­one reads it, buys it, spon­sors it or shares it. It mat­ters that you show up.

Seth linked to anoth­er great post titled Shut Up, Sit Down, and Type which high­lights some­thing I deeply believe:

So what­ev­er the voic­es or grem­lins in our heads are say­ing, our response is the same: just show up every day and do the work.

And last­ly, today’s install­ment on The Dai­ly Post artic­u­lates what I love most about per­son­al blogs:

I am drawn in by their pas­sion, not by their per­fec­tion.

All this will get me going for the next 200 posts.