Is it time to switch…. to writing in English?
I started this blog in 2007. There were a couple of reasons for me to start the blog. I wanted to……
- learn how to blog.
- get better at distilling my ideas.
- practice my writing in Spanish.
Is it time to switch…. to writing in English?
In the last 9 years and 4 months, I have published 108 posts, which is about an average of 1 post a month, which I guess it isn´t all bad, but if I go back and look at what I have learned, I think I can do better.
Because of that, over this holiday season, I have started thinking about projects that I want to take on, why are they important to me, and how I can prioritize which projects to do first (always more projects than I can handle at once). So I am going back to the idea of the blog that I started 9 years ago. I want to revisit the idea and see if I can go further with my blog as I move forward.
Now, I don´t think I will ever be as good as my cousin Jana, but she is a professional writer, and pretty awesome. I, on the other hand, am just a guy that wants to learn and share new things every day. No…… do not go and think that I am going to actually write something every day, but I digress. Back to my thoughts….
Learn to Blog
So, learning how to blog was really more about learning how to have a blog, manage the writing process, the production process, manage the website, deal with servers, etc. As of now, I think I have a basic sense of that. Since I launched the blog, I have built, managed, launched, etc, more than 40 websites. So, the experience has been a good one, but I still think I can focus more on how to get better at the content production process, which is something I really want to learn more about.
This has caused me to wrestle with the idea of writing in English. Obviously, up until now, I have decided not to do that. I have no problem writing in Spanish (that doesn´t mean anyone can read it… hahaha…. I am ok), but since I have been living in Latin America for the last 11-1/2 years I use my Spanish every day, so I guess that shouldn’t be a criteria to keep writing in Spanish.
Distilling my ideas
I have read a lot of successful people say that blogging helps them distill their ideas. It makes a lot of sense. The idea of presenting a point of view, with no feedback prior to pushing the “publish button” is a bit unsettling, but is something I want to get better at doing and make more of a part of my life. I guess I could keep doing that in Spanish, but the more I think about it, the English language is a bit more succinct, so if I am trying to distill my ideas down, English seems like a reasonable option.
Practicing my Spanish
Well, I wouldn’t say I am perfect in my Spanish, far from it. But, I have been living in Latin America since 2005, and spending pretty much every day in Spanish. I think I can let my daily life allow me to get in my “practice.”
So I don’t think the blog NEEDS to be MY location to practice my Spanish, so back to the question at hand: Is it time to switch my writing on the blog from Spanish to English? I think it is worth a shot.
So, here goes nothing, I am going to start writing in English and see how that goes. Hopefully I will be able to get a few more things out than the average 1x per month that I have done for the last 9+ years.
Feel free to make your comments in Spanish or English. I don’t mind