A few days ago I was asked once again why I wore two watches and I gave the usual answer of “this is my GPS watch and that is my Smartwatch”. People still fail to understand so I elaborate and that’s where I saw that blogging is useful.
When you write blog posts daily, for weeks, months, or even years in a row you get into the habit of elaborating on thoughts.
For three hundred and sixty six days I have written a blog post daily. In some cases I wrote two posts, and scheduled the post to appear the next day. This is when I was driving for thirteen hours, or if I knew that my morning was busy. In the process I have definitely given myself a writing habit. The question I ask myself now is whether to continue, or whether to change the posting frequency.
November is the month when a group of people try to write 1667 words per day for a month. they have write-in events, word sprints and many other gimmicks to encourage them to break the challenge into less daunting challenges. I didn’t even consider participating this year for a simple reason. This is my 360th day in a row of writing a daily blog post.
The Daily Blog Challenge My challenge was less ambitious.
I was using Day One to blog but I found the process slow and clunky. I then switched to writing blog posts with VIM and that sped me up by a lot. I then switched to Hugo and VIM. Now I use VS Code with Front Matter to generate the pages, and then wrote plenty of posts using VIM. Now I’m still using FrontMatter CMS but with VS Code without touching VIM.
Yesterday I had no inspiration. In the end I did write about something but only after hours of staring at a hypothetical blank page. When I did start writing I used Frontmatter to generate the page but I forgot to open terminal and write the blog post using VIM. I used VSCode and Markdown. Whilst this might sound ordinary to most I did this because I like writing blog posts with VIM as it gets me to learn, over time, how to use it, automatically, rather than by struggling.
During the early days of the pandemic I wrote for at least one days every day. I was blogging the pandemic experience from my point of view. More recently I have kept up another blogging streak. This time I am reaching day 274 as I write this blog post.
Developing a Writing Habit I mention this because when Medium was first created I liked the idea of a website where we could share writing daily, but at the same time I blogged irregularly and didn’t have a voice.
A month or two ago we had the chance to jump on the Substack wagon while it was hot and to ride the wave of new followers and experience a growing community. I could have joined in. I could have become one of those “I’m one of you people” but I didn’t. Substack Life
Substack went from being a newsletter to almost becoming a community of writers. I say “almost”, because for me to consider a community a community it has to behave like a community.
With the decline in the value of social media so the value of blogging has come back up. By blogging, rather than using social media, for at least an hour or two I am forcing myself to think, and to elaborate on ideas that would otherwise go without conclusion. Having a thought that is shared in 140 characters is easy. Having a thought that is three hundred words long is not.
With the sudden growth of audiences for newsletter writers on sub stacks as they start to use Notes so the question emerges on whether to dump blogging, for news lettering. In theory by news lettering on Substack we grow an audience that is pre-packaged and ready to go. The drawback is that there are two types of content makers. Those that want their readers to read everything they write, and to pay them for the obligation to read what they write and the bloggers.
I have been writing blog posts every single day for one hundred and fourty five days and rather than feel more inspired, and get a big audience, I am writing for an audience of one. Some days I am filled with inspiration and I write the blog post in twenty minutes or less. Other days it takes me an hour or two. It’s hard to write every day because some days are interesting, so there is something to talk about, and other days are dull.