You can't want to start something for the first time, and expect to be perfect in it.

Me :)

I can't believe it's just been a year, it seems quite longer than that.

Yesss, I just clocked a whole 365 days being a part of the amazing Dev community, Holdup, rewind, I believe I didn't emphasize that enough, "AMAZING Dev community". Ah yes, there we go, much better.

The past year in this community has been quite amazing, from the overflow of great useful contents I get to learn from on here everyday, to the incredible people who are very welcoming and helpful. It has been a very wonderful experience for me.

I have also been able to get up to a thousand and 500 amazing DEV followers that push me to be a better developer and writer. I say thank you to each and everyone of you.

Well, some people might think "just 1500 followers in a year? Pfftt, what's all the noise about?". Well well, considering how largely inconsistent I've been in putting out content (and I do say this with much shame)

It is quite the achievement and it makes me happy that people are actually interested in what I have to offer.

Although, I would be honest, my initial intention for setting up an account with DEV in the first place was not to start writing contents, but only to just read other people's articles and learn one or two new things.

My first ever comment on DEV, one year ago today😊.

As time went on, I wrote my first ever blog post which has over 6000 post views as of now. When I hit the publish button, I felt a rush of excitement, that excitement you get from doing something interesting for the first time.

It turned out that I actually loved to write, but I was only held back by all the negative thing that "might" happen. Silly stuffs like "What if I'm not good at it?", "What if people hate what I put out?". And with a lot of "What ifs" going on in my head, it just buried whatever interest in writing that I had. Also coupled with my unrealistic goal of putting out the perfect post. So this brought up a lot of unnecessary stress for me, like just getting to write the first sentence, I would have skimmed through a thousand and one words in my head, looking for that "perfect word", trying to make the sentence as most articulate and perfect as ever. Haa, boy was I kidding myself.

Reading through people's post on this platform was what gave me that confidence to start writing, as I figured out that "you can't want to start something for the first time, and expect to be perfect in it", you have to grow gradually, and make mistakes and learn from them. I eventually decided to take the leap and put out a very so "not perfect" blog post for the first time ever😄. Along line, I was able to bag a spot as one of the Tag Moderators for the community.

Since then, I have gone on to publish contents in the like of smashing magazine and open replay .

I did go to try out HashNode at some point in time, but let me say it was like stepping out of the warm summer breeze, into a polar desert. Now HashNode lovers don't get me wrong, it is great and all, but the community is just not as warm and welcoming as I found Dev to be😁.

And with the occasional meme mondays hosted by Ben Halpern. Ah those are my favorites, I'm quite the meme lover😄.

Anyways if you managed to make it to this point in this post😅, you can tell me about your first writing experience on DEV or how long you've been a member of the community and what you love about it the most.

Well till then, here's to another amazing 365 day on this wonderful platform.