Blog Question Challenge 2025

I was nominated by Andreas to contribute to the Blog Question Challenge, so here ya go!

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

Back in like 2008-ish(?) I was looking for a way to share status updates and other things I found interesting with friends and family that wasn’t the up-and-coming trendy social media platforms. I had a Myspace and was on Facebook right when they opened public registrations. But, I didn’t like them (still don’t).

After I started blogging, I found that my friends and family weren’t interested and they wanted to only use Facebook 😞. At the time I was managing a wholesale construction supply warehouse, but I wanted to change career paths into marketing. So, I changed tactics on blogging to use it as a place to grow my personal brand with a narrow group of people. I would write blog posts about trendy business topics, deep dive marketing tactics, and whatever was topical at the companies I wanted to work. I paired this with social media, finding key people and interacting with them consistently.

It worked! I was offered a job in an office on a web development team, used that to transition to marketing, and then became a marketing manager. I left that company and became a marketing director at another. But, I hated it. I absolutely hated working in an office and corporate politics ruined something I loved. Every day I hoped the building would burn down or an asteroid would hit me on the way to work. I love marketing. I’m good at it. I hate working in an office with office people.

I left and started a construction company with my brother. Now, I blog for me and only about topics I enjoy. I love it so much more and I blog more now than ever. I don’t take back my journey, it is what got me here!

What platform are you using to manage your blog, and why do you use it?

My blog is built on Hugo that runs in a virtual machine on a mini PC in my garage. Previously, I used Wordpress on a VPS and before that I used a custom domain on a Tumblr account. Ultimately, I wanted to self-host my blog without the cost of a VPS, while being ultra-lightweight to keep resource allocation at an absolute minimum. Being in a VM makes it so I can move this sucker around any time I want to any machine in the house. I’ve moved it at least 4 times and even ran on a Pixel phone.

Have you blogged on other platforms before?

A lot! Wordpress on a VPS, custom domain on Tumblr, Medium, plus at least 4 different company blogs and ghost writing for a handful of people.

How do you write your posts?

I write almost everything in Obsidian. I am an avid note taker and want all my writing in one place. Typically, I will be working on an idea or a project and will write copious notes. This could be in one day or across several weeks. Once I feel like I have worked through the idea or I have completed a project, I will clean up my notes into a post. For example, my recent post about docker is a compilation of my notes over the last few months, boiled down to the most important bits. For non-technical posts, it is my notes and daily journal entries put into a single post I feel comfortable sharing.

I run an instance of dufs on top of the Hugo content directory. After I finish writing, I pop open a browser, go to my dufs instance, and drop the file, and Hugo automatically rebuilds the site.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

I write every day about nearly everything. I have a very busy house, so I typically write the most before the kids wake up in the morning and right after they go to bed (before my wife and I have some time together without the chaos of the daytime).

Do you normally publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit?

YOLO. I’ve had plenty of time to think about the topic as I have probably written about it before in my notes. Once I’ve put it down, it goes out.

What’s your favorite post on your blog?

I have a few:

• I want to be left alone
• Father’s Day is complicated
• Displaying my bookmarks RSS feed on a static page in Hugo

Any future plans for the blog?

I would love to change the theme, but I don’t want it to get in the way of managing and publishing the blog. To be honest, the site is on autopilot right now and I can just focus on writing and publishing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

Who will participate next?

It would be fun to see posts from Mark Pitblado, Melanie Kat, and Tracy Durnell

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