Shift your focus. You're not writing for others (strictly) but for yourself. Express your ideas, thoughts, what you've learned. I write a lot, but don't publish, and it's for that purpose. The act of writing is an act of communication, which forces you to formulate your ideas into more coherent forms (and to try and remove ambiguity). If you've just learned a topic, or are learning it, and want to write about it, it makes you think about how to express what you've read or studied (ideally try to do it from memory versus pulling up the references you've been studying).
It's similar to the benefit of teaching, my classmates and I always learned more (in undergrad) by teaching each other in a quasi-seminar format in the computer lab during our study sessions. Someone would naturally take over after a bit as the "teacher" for the session as they found that communicating what we were studying to the rest of us clarified their ideas. Blogging can be similar.
Unless you're at the absolute top of the field, it's very unlikely you'll ever add something new to the discourse. That's not a problem, though.
There are two answers I can see: The first is to keep learning, and leave breadcrumbs for the people who come after you. And maybe, at some point, join the top of your chosen field. It'll be a while, but the breadcrumbs are incredibly valuable to anybody coming after you.
The second is both more interesting, and harder: Find a couple of fields that you're good in. Not an expert, but good. Then write about the intersection. That is almost by definition a much smaller field, and you're much more likely to be at the top of that field. (For a made up example, how many people are really good at music, systems thinking, and gardening, and write about that intersection?)
The things you can generate in that particular field are adding to that particular field - and more importantly, they likely contain unfamiliar insights to people who are only fluent in one of those fields. You've added something new to both your field, and their discourse.
Most of us probably alternate between 1) and 2), and only very few of us will ever be recognized experts in a well-defined field and further that field through our expertise.
That's OK. We're still contributing to the discourse, we just target slightly different people.
I suffer from the same problem. Something to consider is that we benefit from having a diverse set of materials on the same topics. Maybe you explain something a little differently than someone else does, or in a way that resonates better with a certain type of person. Julia Evans[1] is a great example of this. For much of what she publishes, she’s not explaining something that you couldn’t figure out from reading the man pages or a lengthy tutorial, but her work is still hugely valuable because it’s concise, and visual.
The other thing to remember is that writing is just as much for you as it is for others (maybe even more). The act of writing down an explanation of how to do something or how something works ensures that you understand it was well as you think you do. I don’t publish nearly as much as I should, but I often write things down in a Markdown file because it helps me organize the thoughts in my head and lets me identify any gaps in my knowledge.
Examples of common patterns add incredible value. A 1000 page document may contain everything you need to know to implement a protocol, but a well written example will be far more useful for most.
> how do you overcome the perception that you have nothing new to add to the discourse?
Perhaps make a tutorial? There are various neat tools (and combinations of tools) that lack approachable documentation. Won't be ground-breaking, but might be helpful and worth reading.
Great question. My blog is to help people answer questions they Google. I'm the top result for searches like "spark partitionby". The content isn't anything new. They're just useful posts for people that are busy and Googling for answers.
Writing the blog post is what forces me to actually learn about the topic and commit the concept to memory.
It's similar to the benefit of teaching, my classmates and I always learned more (in undergrad) by teaching each other in a quasi-seminar format in the computer lab during our study sessions. Someone would naturally take over after a bit as the "teacher" for the session as they found that communicating what we were studying to the rest of us clarified their ideas. Blogging can be similar.