Wow! It is July 27th! My last post was on December 15 and I mentioned that everyone should have a blog and I just needed to “Just Do It” (thanks, Nike). So, here we are over seven months later. Granted that IS slightly better than the eight month gap between previous posts, but still.
Obviously, this endeavor has not gone as planned. I could probably come up with lots of excuses why I haven’t posted on a regular basis. The two biggest – and I’m sure most common among erstwhile bloggers – would be lack of time and not knowing what to write. However, I recognize that neither of those are great excuses.
There isn’t really a lack of time
Everyone has the same amount of time (except maybe a certain British Dr.), but the issue is how we use it. What it really comes down to is how we plan out our time and what we decide to use the time that we have available. The question is, “Are there times throughout my day that I regularly do a specific thing that I could give up to replace it with writing?”
At first glance, of course the initial answer is “No. I don’t have any time where I am just sitting around with nothing to do.” But that isn’t the question, is it? In today’s age of endless entertainment and education options at our fingertips and screens everywhere, there is no opportunity to be bored. So, it takes more determination to “find time” for things that we want to do, like writing a blog. The important part of the question above is actually, “What am I willing to give up so that I can replace it with writing?”
For many people, the answer seems to be getting up earlier, which means giving up SLEEP. I have actually tried that. But with three kids ages 6 and under, it seems my body feels as though sleep is too valuable to me. I have an alarm set for 5:30am on the Fitbit that I wear to bed. It vibrates and lights up at 5:30, 5:39, and 5:48. This morning, I woke up at 6:17am. However, that doesn’t mean I cannot write in the morning. In fact, I am doing that right now, while I drink my coffee and eat my oatmeal. Other mornings, I would have spent this time checking email or Facebook, but those are things I can easily give up. I may not have time to complete a long thought in one morning, but there is definitely time to work on it.
Who cares what I write?
Seriously, who is going to care? I have no real aspirations of my personal blog becoming like Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, or Ree Drummond‘s and having millions of people reading it everyday. The reality is that basically no one will read what I write here, so why worry about what I am writing? The idea is to practice writing SOMETHING everyday. I have lots of things go through my mind all the time, so using my blog as a way to capture and expand on some of them seems like a great thing to do.
Everyday? Didn’t you try that already?
As I write that line about writing something everyday, I cannot help but look back at it and think that I’ve tried posting a blog daily and it lasted roughly a week. Why would now be any different? Well, it may seem like semantics, but this time I didn’t say POST everyday, I said WRITE everyday. It may take me more than one day to find enough time to complete a thought that I am working on and get it posted, and I am okay with that. There is no reason that I need to have a strict publishing schedule or editorial calendar. I can just write, and when something is done, I will publish it. If you pay attention to the first line of this post and the date it was published, you’ll see I’ve already started.
So, there you have it. This appears to be the seventh attempt at starting or restarting this particular version of my blog (not to mention the multiple attempts on my old Blogger blog before this). Maybe this time it will stick.