February 6th will mark 1 year since I closed my eyes, pressed ‘publish’, and went live with my blog.

 

I started to title this “What I’ve learned from blogging for a year.” However, you know as well as I do that I haven’t exactly submitted a blog post to you for an entire year.

 

However, that is an important part of what I’d like to include in this post in which I’m setting out to reveal how this past year since I’ve started my blog, has gone.

 

To begin, it actually took me over a year to even get the courage up to start my blog, so to finally hit publish was a HUGE hurdle I conquered in February of 2017. (If you haven’t read that post, you can see my very first attempt at blogging here.)

 

From there, I was off to the races. I made a public commitment to myself and to my readers (in my Who I Am page) to post twice a week

 

And I did!

 

Confession time – I had about 8 weeks of posts ready to go before I launched that helped me keep this commitment.

 

After I burned through that (which went by WAY quicker than I imagined) I was scrambling.

 

I had some ideas percolating but I continued to ignore the looming reality that was rapidly approaching – I don’t have anything else to publish!

 

That was tough and I began to lose motivation.

 

I attempted to scale back and only post once a week instead, and had to update through a public commitment on my Who I Am page to reflect that. Yes, you read that right. I rescinded what I had already made public and changed it in the hopes that no one would ever know I failed.

 

Needless to say, I stumbled through the remainder of the year posting sporadically and even getting so discouraged that I would go weeks without even logging in to check on my site.

 

My expectations of myself at the outset were fairly high as I thought I had spent enough time researching and learning ahead of time all the in’s and out’s of what exactly it was going to take to start down this road I longed to travel.

 

I don’t know if I fully expected overwhelming support and responses that boosted my ego on a weekly basis but I can admit that I did anticipate a moderate level of attention and for it to get easier as the year went by.

 

It just didn’t work out like I imagined and I can say with confidence that I’m 100% okay with that.

 

With all that being said, here’s what I’ve learned after 12 months.

 

 

THE GOOD:

 

1. I actually started!

 

In order to achieve my long-term goals, I had to actually take the first step.

Starting this blog was the initial plunge into a brand new experience for me and it had to come sometime. It happened and it allowed me to begin this wonderful adventure that I’m happy to be on.

 

2. My understanding has grown.

Doing something of this magnitude on my own required me to learn to at least some degree: the technical side of starting a blog/website, the design process, and the maintenance of it all.

 

From there, to even put a full post together, there is writing, formatting, and editing involved as well as sourcing images, scheduling, emailing, and posting to any social media accounts.

 

Through the trial and error process of what I wanted things to look like, it was a challenge to get all of this accomplished, yet I can confidently say, I’m more equipped now with the knowledge I’ve received to propel me further down the road.

 

3. There was no overnight success.

Who wants to be an overnight success? Only everyone, right?

 

Of course, that would make things easier BUT I wouldn’t have learned along the way. What would be the point of that?

 

I wouldn’t have appreciated the value that the struggle brought. John Maxwell says, “Our experiences overwhelm our understanding.” Boy, how true that is. But it’s necessary.

“Our experiences overwhelm our understanding.” - John Maxwell #nmwi Click To Tweet

 

THE BAD:

 

1. Inconsistency

As I’ve already stated and is evident by looking at my posts, I was not faithful to my commitment to consistency this year. Starting out, 2 posts a week was a lofty goal and what I did not factor into that was how much life was going to get in the way.

 

None of my other commitments disappeared this year (e.g.-My full-time job, my family, role at church, etc.), yet I added an enormous time commitment that I just wasn’t able to handle.

 

On top of that, as was revealed late last year in my Absenteeism Letter, I dealt with a major family tragedy. Unfortunately, another one has just hit my family at the very outset of 2018 with the passing of my grandmother.

 

I didn’t expect life to suddenly be placed on hold while I worked my way through this endeavor but I didn’t realize how disciplined I needed to be in order to even meet a weekly commitment to posting.

 

2. Determining if value was provided was difficult

One thing that I’ve heard preached from those who have influenced me through their own platforms was the need to provide value with my work.

 

I attempted to do that and when I saw my most popular post reach over 100 views in 1 day, I thought I was on to something.

 

But the accumulation of my lack of consistency to my audience, my very poor handling of promotion, seeing my subscriber count plateau at less than 20, all bred doubt into what was already a rough ride I was on.

 

I’m sure anyone creating content experiences this because psychologically it’s easy to get infatuated with likes, shares, comments, etc. and I was spending more time refreshing my page views and other statistics than I was creating and connecting. This wasn’t a failure of my audience, this was a failure on my part.

 

3. The plague of Imposter Syndrome

Who am I to share my thoughts on any subject at all? With a laundry list of failures in my own life, coupled with a lack of credentials behind my name professionally, do I really believe there is a need for what I have to say?

 

Every time I open up a blank document to start typing, these thoughts scream at me from an empty page.

 

Every. Single. Time. (Even with this post!)

 

I hear that voice say that I’m not an expert in any field, that I don’t have the technical ability or eye for design needed to attract people, that I am not as creative with my words, or that I am not as witty or smart as other writers.

 

So I intentionally distract myself with other meaningless things such as videos, games, reading, scrolling through my social media feeds, or anything else where I can justify I don’t have the time it takes to sit down and commit to growing my reach.

 

The audacity of having a long-term dream to continue keeping this project alive has crept into my goal setting for this year and beyond.

 

I don’t know if there’s a cure for this, yet in spite of how loud this voice gets, I’m determined to not let it win.

 

 

IN CONCLUSION:

 

Taking all this into consideration, moving forward, my plans are to not lose sight of what I’ve already accomplished and be grateful for the experiences I’ve had; to correct the mistakes I’ve made with the anticipation that I’ll make more – just different ones; and to focus less on how this blog makes ME feel and instead focus on how it helps OTHERS.

 

I do plan on being realistic with my contributions to my blog and social media while at the same time getting back to the work I was doing on adding new avenues of content such as a podcast.

 

So, to all who have visited even ONCE and those of you who have patiently held in there with me, I would like to say a great big THANK YOU.

 

Thank you for reading, thank you for commenting, thank you for sharing, and most of all, thank you for coming back.