I’ve been writing for around 3 months now (minus the week I was sick) and I’m supposed to be around a quarter of the way to a built up blog that I wanted back when I started.
I gave myself a year to build up my blog with pure brute force, not relying on monetization or ads or any of that shit – just daily writing and grinding, investing into the blog with direct sweat equity.
Back then I decided that I would put off learning anything about the process and just brute force it and work on daily writing till I came around the 3 month mark, when I would take a writing/blogging course.
And here we are, three months later. This blog was one that I wanted to be my personal brand and my personal baby used as a hobby blog first and foremost. I do want to monetize it down the line but my focus right now is on becoming the best writer I can be and the first step to that was to write daily.
I know that it’s good to write until you get your first 100 articles out and so that’s how I came upon the 3 month mark. With a plan to post twice a week and write every day, I would get to around 100 blog posts written and 30 blog posts posted (roughly) on the blog before I decide to reinvest my time into a course.
Well, here we are. And I’ve (mostly) only done one of those things.
I wrote every day but I took weekends off, so it’s closer to 60 articles that I’ve written – which is still phenomenal progress when you think about the fact that I’ve wanted to write this blog for the past 10 years!
As for posted, I’ve only posted an abysmal 4 posts compared to the 24 I was supposed to!
Now, I can still post more content for a while (say, post 3-5 articles a week for several weeks) but it’s not the same as a consistent habit to ship your content!
You need to be shipping.
ABS – always be shipping!
(Which ironically is one of the 4 posts I posted!)
Anyways, my point is that it’s about time I started giving myself some more strategy.
I generally think that you should brute force new habits till about 20% of the way you want to get, before you start applying theory and strategy to it (try not to read into it and be a smartass saying “well if I want to do it for the rest of my life, how much is 20%?” – trust me, you’ll know).
And so we’re at the crossroads, I need to start applying some theory to the things I’m doing – to MANY things I’m doing but especially to my writing.
And also, I will need to find a way to make money in the meantime so that I can afford to blog for free.
I mean, I’m not jobless (far from it) but I do need to increase my income by online means.
And so, not only will I be doing some theory work on writing but also on other things I wanted to achieve in the meantime – from work at my job (certs) to coding to dancing to martial arts.
I need to get moving on that shit.
I’m thinking of doing the same with my homemaking chores such as cooking and cleaning but we’ll see how it goes. Generally, I want to increase my skills and while my brain is screaming at me to learn everything I possibly can – I know that that approach is wrong.
I need to brute force it first and set up the habit and get a “feel” for the activity before I even come to know what’s worth reading up on and improving in and what’s not.
I will post on progress, of course. But first let me post my backlog of articles – starting with this one today.