Starting My Blogging Journey

It has been a long time since I first had a thought of starting a blog, but procrastination was always in the way. Now is the time. No more delays.

I Want to Write About:

1. Technologies I am working on.
2. Technologies I am learning.
3. Solutions to problems I faced.

My Goals:

1. Build a journal and document my experience as I grow as a developer and have a searchable history that I can refer to when my memory fails me.

2. Share my knowledge with the community and get involved in discussions about the things I am writing and harness the valuable feedback from the community.

3. Form and present my own thoughts and opinions. Reading is valuable but it is unidirectional when it comes to thoughts, you always read about what others are saying and sometimes you ride the trending train of thoughts without having a solid idea of your own.

4. Back in my university days, I had a habit of writing synopses of the subjects I am learning which were quite useful for me and my colleagues. I want to do the same thing now with the new technologies I am learning and start writing those short notes that are targeted for my future self and publish them so others can also benefit from them.

5. I believe writing will force me to take an extra step and dive deeper into understanding the concepts I am trying to write about.

Not My Goals:

1. Although it seems quite beneficial to have a big online audience and monetize it, that's not my main goal. At least not in the short term. Building an audience for me should be the side effect of sharing meaningful content, not the reason. I am not planning to push myself into writing more blogs than I can, just for the sake of gaining followers. I am just starting this journey and I want to focus on the quality of my content and building the habit of writing regularly.

2. I am not trying to promote myself as an expert in the field of programming and suggest that I provide the best solutions, rather than a developer who is trying to share his ideas and thoughts (which not necessarily will be 100% correct) and listen to criticism and feedback and improve on it.

Why Now:

I started recently a form of personal refactoring. I have always been busy and realized I will probably always be. So I decided to stop postponing my personal to-do list and start NOW.

I began by reviving my hobbies. I joined a soccer league and started playing weekly. I organized my sleep schedule and began waking up early to gain more hours of daylight. I started going to the gym. And now I am writing my first blog post.

Also, I have to confess that hashnode made it really tempting and easy to start blogging.

About Me:

My name is Ragheed Affas (my colleagues call me Ray). I am a front-end developer living in Ontario, Canada. I work at Travelcoup Systems, building first-of-its-kind travel solutions. I code with JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Gatsby, Angular and more. I always explore new technologies and I am currently interested in taking a deep dive into learning Svelte, Rust and Blockchain.

Thanks.