Today marks my 30th day of consecutive blogging. I’ve written about yoga, the business of yoga, travel, life, my love of Harry Potter, and more. There have been days when blogging has felt challenging, and days when blogging has felt easy. Here are the biggest things I’ve learned over the past 30 days:
It’s hard to write when you’re in a poor mental space.
My most challenging writing days happened on the days where I was in a bad mood or something else was off in my life. When I was in a poor mental space, I really struggled to produce content.
The answer is not to give up content creation though, it’s to change your mental headspace. Meditate, take a walk, do yoga, write a gratitude list (and maybe use that as your blog post), clean your room or your workspace. Do whatever it takes to get you in a place where you feel like you are in a mental headspace for writing.
The more you write, the faster you get.
As I progressed through the month, I found that I built up confidence in my ability to write and I could trust that I would be able to produce something and just get it done. The more I wrote, the faster I was able to get my blog posts finished with what I think is about the same quality.
This is one of my most valuable takeaways from the blogging challenge. Trusting in my ability to write something in a short amount of time and push it out is huge and something that I can apply to so many different areas of my life.
Ideas come from real-life stuff.
I had a list of topics to write about before I went into the challenge, but those made up less than 10 of my 30 blog posts. There were many (most) days where I woke up and had no idea what I was going to write about, but as the day went on I would find something to write about from my real life. The example that comes to mind for me is my post on day 26 about the challenges of teaching yoga online. I had had a super frustrating day and I was really fed up with the road blocks that were presenting themselves around teaching yoga online, so I decided to write about it.
If you’re trying to complete a daily writing challenge and you’re looking for ideas, draw from your day-to-day life.
Posts with photos take a lot longer to publish.
Many of my posts are just text with a featured picture from my photo collection or from Unsplash, but others have a collection of photos (posts about my travels mostly). I found that these posts took me a lot longer to publish because I had to spend time finding the photos, editing them, putting them in the right place on my blog, and then hitting publish.
When you decide to do something everyday, stick to it.
When you make the commitment to do something everyday, like a writing challenge push through the hardest of times and stick to it. Knowing that you can complete a challenge like writing everyday is great for self-esteem and confidence, and for gaining faith in your ability to know that you can and will follow through with the things that you say you will do.
There will never be a “good” time so just go for it.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in how busy life is and make excuses for not writing. The fact is that there will never be a time where you are not busy for 30 days, so if you want to do a blogging challenge just go for it. Set the goal, set your mind to it, and make it happen, even on days when your work and social life are crazy. It’s so, so worth it.
Don’t stop because the challenge is over.
I’ve been thinking for a couple of days what I want my blogging to look like going forward. I’ve debated continuing to blog for another 30 days or maybe even more, and I’ve decided that I want to have a blogging goal for myself. I want to blog monthly on my personal website, I want to blog monthly for The World Wanderers, and I want to blog bi-weekly for M.B.Om.
Adios for now! See you next month! 🙂