I admit that when I set this challenge up for myself near the end of December, I did so with trepidation:
- Would I be able to find something to write about EVERY SINGLE DAY?
- Would I be able to do all the research necessary for each post during a single day?
- Would I be able to find enough overlap between the three areas of my current life (reading, writing, retirement) to make all three areas interesting?
- Would I neglect other areas of my life in order to get a post written and published every day?
I did manage to write a post a day for the first month. Here’s what I’ve learned from the challenge so far:
- It was easy to find topics to write about once I began paying attention to what goes on in the world around me.
- Not every post needs to be a research project. (Since I tend to approach everything new that I come across as a research project requiring a lot of background investigation, this lesson was perhaps the most difficult but important one for me to learn.)
- The various areas of my life do cross-pollinate each other once I begin to think that way.
- So far I have not felt that I am neglecting any important parts of my life, probably because I’ve made an effort not to compartmentalize the several aspects of my life but rather to see them as complementary parts of a whole.
One challenge I still have to face is how I’ll keep up with writing and posting when we travel.
But overall, I’ve found this first month of the blog post a day challenge in 2015 to be enlightening and rewarding.
Here are my January stats:
Number of posts written: 31
Shortest post: 55 words
Longest post: 1,360 words
Total words written: 19,115
Distribution of posts across my three blogs:
The total of posts here may not equal the number of posts written last month because I occasionally publish the same post on more than one blog. However, I have included each post only once in my total word count.
Last month’s featured posts:
1. 8 Lessons College Bowl Season Teaches About Writing
I’m featuring this post because it resulted from the first time I saw how something in one area of my life (personal experience) applied to another part of my life (my writing). I see posts like this all over the internet and often find them interesting, but in the past I just didn’t think this way. But this one appeared out of nowhere while I was watching college football, an example of how synchronicity happens once you open yourself to the possibility of it.
2. Flow
I’m featuring this post because it’s my first attempt at defining a technical term for a general audience on my blog.
I’d appreciate it if you’d take a look at this post and then leave a comment telling me whether you think I’ve succeeded.
