This blog isn’t the best thing since sliced bread. Heck, the writing isn’t even all that great, and the subject matter seems to be a bit shallow (yes I may be overly self critical). So why do I bother? Why am I doing this?

Fear. Plain and simple.

Fear of rejection.

Fear that I was not able to put forward something good enough.

I’ve coped with this form of insecurity for much of my life, and have managed to maintain a reasonable level of control for many years. However, I noticed that I still had this block when it came to writing something down. It could be an email, an SMS, a facebook post… or worse a design document for work.

Could I solve this problem?

What if someone laughed at my design?

What if there were problems with my design?

So, when I had to build a formal place for documentation around a plugin I wrote for Kibana I ran across this set of cool libraries that would allow me to blog easily enough. I took the plunge and turned on the feature, and thought long and hard about what I wanted to write about. I decided that I wanted to write about what I know, or thought I knew. Hence the term ‘grok’.

Originally I had intended to keep the blog more on the technical side, the safe side for me, but as I started to jot down ideas for blog posts I found myself deciding to spend more time on my own philosophical takings on a variety of subjects. I think I’ll still write up some posts that are technical in nature, but I won’t limit myself.

In the end this has been a cathartic experience, and I’ve found myself better able to break through the writing blocks I have self created.