Why I started my own blog

And why you should do it too!

I had the idea of starting my own blog already several years ago, but back in the days I kept asking myself “what should I write about? I am no expert in anything!”. I realized much later, though, that blogging is not actually showing how much you know about a specific topic or field, but is more a path that you want to have with your reader, and, most of the times, the reader doesn’t even need to be “real”! The reader might also be yourself, your younger self or even your older self.

Explaining something you discovered and that you found interesting, a shower thought that made you reflecting or an image, a movie you watched, a short essay or a small personal creation are all great sources for starting a blog article; thinking about what you know and what you discovered is a great way to organize your thought, checking if you really understood something and perhaps also teaching something cool to someone else!

So there you go! That’s what it is all about!

What I’ve been writing about

I asked myself: What truly pushes me to get of bed in the morning? What truly passionates me? What would I spend a countless number of hours doing or talking about? The answer is below.

F1 Analytics

As a great Ferrari fan (a true “tifoso” as we say in Italian) and as a true geek with the passion for coding, I decided, after reading a countless number of articles and analysis, to try and make some analysis by myself. I made some Google searches and I discovered the amazing F1 ergast API, an API offering free telemetry data of every F1 car. Well, I got the data, I got the passion, I got the tools, this is what came out!

The 52nd Book

Encouraged by the release of endorphins of my first project, I decided to finally put some order on my shelf and I said “I remember reading somewhere that super cool psychological experiment where they proved X” or “I know that scientist Y said Z, but I don’t remember in which book I read that…” and so I said “why not start writing some notes about what I read? Why not also writing short summaries about the book that I finish reading?”;

The result was my reading (b)log and my amazing (?) Zettelkasten system. (I’ll write a later post about it)

So, say again, why should you do it?

Well, for many reasons actually…

• Let people to know you. Blogging allows yourself to step out your comfort zone, telling some people something about you and letting others discover something about you. …and letting yourself discovering something about yourself too! As Socrates said: know yourself!
• Develop new skills: from storytelling, to communication skills, to hardcore skills like programming, data science and data visualization; moreover I got familiar with a lot of new topics and tools like SEO analytics and traffic redirection etc…
• blogging creates opportunities and make it easier to connect with and meet other people (aligned with the idea od serendipity)
• Blogging forces you to teach yourself what you don’t know and to articulate what you do know. When you begin writing a blog post, you are forced to organize your thoughts. If there are any gaps in the topic that you are writing about, you will have to learn about it. Writing out and articulating your thoughts is a great way to internalize something you’ve learned or experienced.
• Writing helps you become more familiar with the topic you’re writing about. Blogging helped (better say, forced) me to think about what I know, what I read and what I’m saying and ultimately even pushed me to develop a new organization system for all my knowledge. Luckily a close friend of me came to my rescue and introduced me to the concept of the Zettelkasten. I’ll probably talk about the Zettelkasten system later in this series of posts, but for the moment it will suffice to say that is a note taking system designed to allow yourself to develop new ideas and connect different concepts and topics. I couldn’t have asked for more.
• Last but not least, might generate a second passive income!