End of 2019 now. The last post as you can see on this blog was of March 2017. I was in my final year of Engineering then. At the end of the previous year, I bought this domain “shakeeb.in” and thought at least this will motivate me to finally drop a post. But nah!
A little history of this blog
Let me tell you why I created this blog in the first place. My friends on Facebook, WhatsApp and a few forums, especially Urdu Mehfil, were asking for a place where they could read all my work. (Sounds fancy, doesn't it?) Being a polite person that I am ( :cough: ), I complied. But unfortunately, I couldn’t post anything for the reasons I still don’t. (More on these “reasons” in a while.)
The first thing which finally pushed me to move my lazy bottom (not literally, of course) was a report which I was asked to write. To be honest, I wasn’t going to write anything if that workshop would not have turned that astounding.
I dropped a few more posts and then just stopped posting anything on this blog; wasted a lot of time procrastinating (which I love BTW). On the request of few very close friends, I created the Urdu blog and posted a chunk of my tutorial/essay “How to be a good Urdu poet” as 4 blog posts, then parked the Urdu blog at the sub-domain “ur.shakeeb.in”, (ur is ISO 639-1 standard for Urdu). I did publish few other posts there too, but still, most of them were not even part of my plan.
In every month or so, I kept checking on this blog's stats for some reason, and kept wondering who are these people and why are they reading these 5 posts?
Look at that. Russia? Seriously? I hope they are all bots.
I've had a long list of things to finish in 2019, most of which are still pending, or have made its place at the far bottom of my priority list.
Priorities change. Mine did too. But it’s not reasonable to abandon the tasks altogether, leaving them incomplete for the sake of your new interest. That’s why my new year plan is to do A LOT in the least time possible.
Problems and their possible solutions
Coming to the difficult part. Let me list down the reasons why I couldn’t complete the tasks:
1. Perfection: I have the constant urge to present the things in the best way possible, which is not a wrong inclination in itself, but have somehow kept me from publishing my work. Throwing the work in pending-bucket just because you will sooomeday make it presentable and publish – is pure laziness.
Solution:
Present it, then refine it whenever you get the time. And for the urge part, you know you’ll not present it cringe-level-bad anyway.
2. What: The most difficult thing for me is to decide what to post. No, I'm not out of ideas. It’s the opposite. I have too many of them. In fact, as mentioned above, I’ve a lot of them incomplete. So, the issue expands to deciding what to post / complete / begin with.
Solution:
Pick whatever appeals you at the moment. Don’t wait. Do it.
3. Where: Each platform (social media, forums, blogging services, Q&A sites) has at least one plus point, so like a normal CS student, I am signed up for almost all of them. Every time you get something to post, the chaos starts in the mind and the post sits back in a corner, frightened.
Solution:
Use “length” as the deciding factor. Also, use website as the central hub.
Plans
I'm listing down my plans here publicly, because one –This post will be a reference for me in the coming days, I’ll look for this post whenever I’ll lose my focus; and two – somebody from the readers will keep poking me about something s/he is excited to see completed.
I've not added the specifics right now, and will add them as and when required.
Here goes the list:
- Maintaining my personal log/diary/rant etc.
- LearnedToday – I learn a lot of things every day, about diverse topics. Will write these things daily, even if it’s obvious-to-the-level-of-dumb for the world.
- Weekly – Start posting the stuff I learn every week
- Sharing – Personal experience + Psychology + Self-help + Philosophy etc.
- Works – Posting previous works/ completing work in progress + Properly arranging and maintaining ongoing projects (Website, GitHub)
- Tutorials for absolute beginners (because why not?)
- Reading – Minimize the time spent on useless crap of Facebook / WhatsApp and read the books I’ve left unfinished for years now
Accordingly, categories would be:
- Personal (blog, interests)
- Nostalgia
- Reviews
- Tutorials
- Self-help
- Religion
- Politics
- Works (My poetry, prose, books, software, apps etc)
We all make plans. The question is, do we stick to it? This time, I hope I will.
What are your plans for the year 2020? And what are the things you should’ve completed in 2019 but are still left in the to-dos? Share in the comment below.