WordPress.com: beautiful platform or stinging issue?

I’ve just hopped onto the WordPress train. Since I don’t believe in jumping into the water to find out if it’s cold I’ve read nearly every post about starting up a blog written by professional bloggers (the ones I like anyway).

Every single one of them told me to go for a self-hosted WordPress blog (like they had, obviously). Next I was to get plug-ins for stats, for security and for flexibility, whatever flexibility meant for a blogger (I didn’t know – why else would I read about blogs?). All those well-meant tips gave me the impression I really shouldn’t go for a ten-minute-to-get-started blog because the experience would probably be incredibly painful.

Then I weighed pros, cons, hopes and fears. I wanted to get started but I wanted to get things right too. I hesitated. And then I went for a blog on WordPress.com.

Why?

Basically my train of thought went as follows.

• If I go with the self-hosted version I’ll want to do it right. Because it means paying more. Not a fortune but more.
• So I won’t stop there will I? I’ll go for a premium WordPress theme because I want one that is just right for my subject and since I’m already paying to go self-hosted I’ll dig until I find a theme I love.
• Then I’ll get all 41 essential plug-ins plus 28 fun ones. Next up, the worries about all the future updates will probably kick in. I’ll end up deleting half a dozen plug-ins.
• Given time I’ll read up on coding and try some changes to get things exactly the way I want them.
• Since I’m not a night owl and coding will probably end up costing way more time than I ever planned to spend on it, I’ll find myself saying things to our two-year old I really shouldn’t say, ever (and anyway he’s not supposed to learn those words) for messing up my code by squeezing himself between me and the keyboard and then pressing any key he can reach, or dropping his favorite toy.
• After all that I’ll have a great place to publish my blog. And I’ll create my first post. I can just picture myself staring at the screen.
• Er.
• By this time I’ll probably be able to write great stuff about coding, plug-ins and security (including the ‘kids & keyboards’ issue). But that wasn’t the reason I started out now was it?

You’ll have guessed it. I think I have enough ideas to write half a dozen posts. Or two dozen. Maybe more. The only way to find out is by writing. What I really want is to write and publish all those ideas that, if I don’t pin them onto my blog, will fly off into the sunset. And I want to find out if writing those ideas down means I’ll have more room in my head – room that will be filled with new ideas.

I just know that at this stage I could easily get side-tracked and it would take months before getting to the stage of actually writing my first post.

That is not going to happen. I won’t let it happen.

Note: my “Hello World” post was originally created on July 30th. But I had so many things to do: choosing a theme (which I thought I’d done but then I decided to change it after all), then getting a header photo, widgets, why isn’t there a Buffer widget? So I didn’t edit the post until some days later. And then I decided I might as well republish it altogether. My first experience with WordPress.com leads me to ask what on earth those bloggers meant when they called this the 10-minute version??

I’ll admit it probably wouldn’t be a 10-day version if I didn’t have a day job or if I had decided to stay up till 4 a.m. to get things done.