Plan your blog like you plan your life

When I was younger I was big into planning. That is, until a series of events that I planned for didn’t happen. Because of those experiences I threw planning out the door, leaving my life open to whatever God wanted to do with it, trying to pretend that I didn’t care anyway.

Then I grew up and realized how childish my resolve was. Rather than disregard my bent towards planning I needed to temper it and make room for the unexpected.

I started this, and the two other blogs I have, without a plan. After all, isn’t blogging about putting your heart out into cyberspace without a care in the world about who is reading it? Today, I’ve realized that that thinking is as foolish as my initial resolve to stop planning my life after those series of disappointing events because, the truth is, I do care. When I write something and someone doesn’t even bother to at least ‘like’ it, I feel deflated and unappreciated after all the hours I put in carefully crafting my posts.

I just read The Prepared Writer’s Process for Creating Excellent Content Every Day by Katie aka The Wellness Mama. Don’t wait for inspiration, she suggests. Take control of your content by planning to write. Have a “content strategy” and an “ultimate goal” as your foundation and build on that with a structured routine of writing. I visited her blog and it’s impressive. As a wife and mother of 5 homeschooled children, she has to plan to write!

I’ve never thought of myself as a writer, but it’s clear that if this, and any other blog I’ve started is to be as successful as hers, there must be some merit in planning my writing.

And, I will.

Let’s see how it goes.

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Why I feel tired after one blog post

After posting the first blog entry, I felt great. It was the climax of this strong sense I had that I should do this. But here I am one week later…beat.

Last week was stressful. I had a deadline to meet for my paid job, which meant long days and much irritability. Apart from that I was obsessing about what to post next. Should I talk about the importance of posting regularly; how empathy affects blogging; or how I felt about how my other two blogs were doing? Reflecting on it, I realized that my anxiety (let’s just call it what it is) was because I wanted perfection. The perfect story to be written in the perfect way. But, should perfection really be my (your) goal or is true satisfaction and growth gained from the process of blogging, the mistakes, the triumphs, and the ‘in between’ days?

I’m thinking, it must be the latter. This feels like a poor entry (as compared to the first) but it’s a necessary one. I will press on, I will grow, I will become better at this blogging thing.

Blogging about blogging

This is my third blog. I’ve dedicated this one totally to my gut feelings and thoughts about this thing called blogging. When I posted on my FB page that “Starting a blog feels like standing in a crowd, talking to yourself aloud and hoping that somebody will listen”, I really didn’t think that I would get a reaction. After all, FB posts often feel that way too. You post and hope that you’ll get at least one ‘like’ and, if it’s good, a couple of comments and if it’s really good, a whole slew of reactions.

Blogging is hard. And, I never expected it to be. I started two blogs; one of a growing interest in photography where I show my photos and the other on behalf of a closed FB group that I Admin. Now, unlike the first where I kinda knew that I had to build an audience, the blog for the second already had an audience…or so I thought. Since it’s launch about 5 weeks ago I’ve barely gotten even one like for each post. In fact, I think I only have 5 or so for the 4 entries I’ve done, which is pitiful. Just like the photography one I actually have to build an audience too [sigh].

So, here I am again, reaching out to cyberspace for help, comments, feedback on this blogging thing. Let’s see how it goes…again.