OK, so what have I learned from the longer and the shorter recent blogging chain? And what am I planning to do next in this space?
Quick recap of what has happened: I signed up for micro.blog for reasons, there was the 30 day challenge pin which was enough motivation for me to post everyday for a month, I got that, and it’s been a struggle to post since then. I also read Bullet Journal Method 📚 which has been very helpful for thinking about focus, and about doing less.
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Why do I want to do this, what was my initial motivation? I think I’ve got some things to say that might be helpful to others. I want to get better at writing effectively to say those things. I also have an idea for a novel that is not finished, so I need more practice at writing. Several novels actually. 📝
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I am not sure how much time I really have for daily writing on the blog. I’ve gotten a lot of value out of improving and targeting my journal practice. Maybe I should just focus on that for now, for some limited time, and revisit later. 🤔 But I also think I got a lot of value from writing the blog posts too. 🧐
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Churning out posts for 30 days on whatever was in front of me was fine, but kind of untargeted. I think an iterative improvement would be to align the blog writing with a longer term goal. Make the action of doing the blogging something that supports progress toward that. There are two goals (as already mentioned): my own observations, and progress toward my novel.
- Advancing the novel could be research reports, exercises for writing, etc.
- I hesitate to share my own observations because they feel unoriginal or derivative, or repetititve of something that I just read. Even though I know my own observations are unique to me.
Oh, and reading reports. Everyone loves a good book report, right?
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I still think writing is important for knowing what you know, and understanding what you think. I don’t want to stop doing it.
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It is very easy to substitute “working on the blog” i.e. futzing with the css or whatever, for writing. Writing was and is the goal. I have mostly successfully avoided doing much futzing. Staying focused on the writing is explicitly the goal here. No futzing around.
What's next is that I sort out my goals and try to align my blog writing practice with those. I also continue getting real with what is practicable given limited time. I will also be experiment with being more intentional about post constraints, not just the alignment with the goals.
I'm not going to be hyperbolic and say that writing well is a super power, but it is a skill that makes you more effective at living.
