Look back, or Keep Moving?
It’s happened, I missed a few days. It was bound to happen. After all, I am writing one a day, there was no backlog to keep posting when life got in the way.
So, now I have to decide: do I work to get the 31 blog posts I committed to at the start of January, or do I just keep going and we see what we get at the end?
To make the choice, it’s probably best to start with why I was doing this in the first place? To encourage myself to write and post and keep going, to keep the desire for perfection from getting in the way of good enough, to make posting less precious and more approachable.
Do I need to post 31 posts to really get there? I don’t know.
What I do know is that I don’t want that to happen again. I don’t want to be in this position where a few days risk throwing off the whole of my momentum. So, as tonight is my Friday, I know how I want to proceed.
- Keep writing my posts. On days off of work, if I have the energy, write more than one and queue the extras.
- If I have at least three posts in the queue, I will post one extra. Repeat until the all missed posts are covered.
- Don’t feel guilty for missing a day here or there.
The whole point of this experiment is to step outside of my comfort zone and work to build my confidence. Feeling guilt when I mess up isn’t a way to learn and move forward and grow.
Besides, building a buffer is a good idea. After all, I’m going to take vacations eventually. I’m going to want this to keep going even when I’m on vacation, or sick, or whatever. I want this to keep going. Eventually, I’ll want people to read this blog. Once that starts, then, I’ll really need to start thinking about this a bit more seriously. I’ll need to start researching what I talk about, and put more effort into the quality, and all sorts of things that I don’t even know yet.
I hope, one day, I get there, but, for now, I’m happy to keep talking into the void.
To paraphrase Austen Kleon, take advantage of when you are no one. Once you have an audience, there are expectations. One day, there will be expectations other than my own on this blog.
One day, I’ll need to actually think about who my audience even is. Who would want to read this?
One of the starting advice you see on all the ‘how to blog’ sites is ‘know your audience’, ‘know your niche’. I don’t even know what I want to talk about, how can I know my niche? Or who would want to read it?
Write now, strategise later. There’s time for that later. For now, keep moving.