Mr. blogs everyday

I have a confession to make: I thought it would be easy to write a blog post of 500 words minimum a day for 30 days. This requirement comes from Ink Haven Residency a writing bootcamp hosted in Berkley, California. You attend in person, and the main requirement is that you write 500 words a day. Sometimes as prep leading up to this people end up trying to write more frequently to practice.

First off the streak which could've started when I wrote about AI technically broke the second day when I relied on a blog post my brother wrote, and since then I've asked him to write even more. If I'm lucky he'll help out. Not so that I can say that I managed to write 30 days in a row, but to hear his thoughts. That's the thing I have a lot of thoughts. The last few posts I've written have been anywhere from 1k words to 2k words plus. In addition to having things to say I've previously not had the reputation for being concise. I would surely benefit from trying to limit my word count, and trying to express an idea more succinctly. Attention spans are getting shorter. Text lends itself to being skimmed, and therefore it can be useful to try and be captivating.

I've prolonged the point. The confession is that I think it's only a matter of days before I stop trying to write every day. I understand the benefit, but I have doubts about how to spend my time. At my uncle's birthday party in December I met one of his friends Ken who recently released a book. He's journaled for 50 years there's a picture of a stack of his journals on his website. The book that Ken released is The Pen & the Mirror Wisdom from 50 years of Journaling. I'm sure if I reach out to Ken he can tell me if he managed to journal for every single day or what his estimate is of the number of days he missed.

When I talked to Ken he mentioned that he was shy about promoting his work. He knew that if he maintained a stronger internet presence that he could reach more people, but he didn't feel comfortable doing it. I told Ken something along the lines of being public about your work serves more purposes than self promotion. One of the most valuable benefits of sharing your work publicly is that it allows you to connect with others. The article I tried to reference to Ken (and which I should probably follow up and send to him) is that "A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox".

Although there are upsides to being public there are also downsides. If you are too open about your information then it can possibly be used to scam you in some capacity. If you write things publicly in a non-anonymized way perhaps it's only a matter of time before you face reputational damage. When I was in college we were always told companies will Google your name, and look things up about you.
I just googled my name the 4th or 5th link points to this blog. It doesn't help that it can be accessed at blog.josebig.io the domain includes my last name! If I wanted to look into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) I might be able to get the blog to be at the top.

The blog is also posted on my twitter profile, however I don't spend as much time posting on twitter so it's less likely that people will find it. Ghost the website where I write blogs has it's own discoverability platform that I can use to increase my reach. Substack is the popular blogging platform or long form content platform right now, and if I posted there I could try to benefit from their algorithm expanding my reach.

At the moment I am content with having a small, but loyal following. On Ghost I can see the analytics of at least who opens their emails. No pressure to my readers, but thank you to those who have regularly open their emails. It actually is pretty meaningful because an email inbox can be a pretty noisy place, so the fact that I'm catching people is nice. My dad has email filtering rules for his family so everything we send to him gets sent to a family folder. The good thing is that he has one view where he can see everything we've ever sent him. The downside is he never looks at the family folder. Alas the blog sends from thoughts@ghost.io, so my dad shouldn't be filtering out this blog, yet he doesn't open his inbox.

I'm content with reaching 42 blog posts on this blog. Often times when someone starts blogging you'll notice that they habit doesn't stick. Maybe they write a lot at first, and then stop all together. Maybe they revisit only a few times a year (thankfully there is no public record of me failing on my gym routine). For me, and probably for them this isn't a job it's a hobby, so do it as long as it serves you. I don't know if writing for days in a row serves me. Notably the people at Ink Haven are dedicated full time to writing. I still have a full time job, and other hobbies. However, they probably edit their posts, I barely do that. They probably curate what they write more. Perhaps for everything they post their are multiple other things that don't get posted (that's less so the case for me). The Ink Haven residences also have to deal with feedback, the impact that this has on your psyche, and your process.

In my case I have a small supportive group, and the rest is writing into the ether. Even though I talked about paths to growing the blog it's nicer that it is lower stakes, that there is a relatively small audience. As for the imperfections now that AI can make everything so polished I can hope that if my writing is bad, or if it's distracted that it carries with it a human charm. I actually think AI will be able to adapt to different styles, so I shouldn't use that as a unique selling point.

I've been enjoying writing. It's helpful to have a concrete target. 30 of something with a certain word count. That's it. I probably shouldn't be writing about writing everyday, but I feel a sense of accomplishment working towards this. I'm undecided on the accountability factor. Does letting people know I might be aiming for this help keep me accountable, or would it be better for me to take on the goal without proclaiming it to the world? I am sure results vary per person.

Anyway it's Valentine's Day eve. It's almost Valentine's really since it's getting so late. I was sleepy before writing this. When I start writing I get carried away. Maybe that's because the hardest part is often starting, and then from there it's not that bad. At work we are working on a new initiative with a tight timeline. I am behind. Perhaps some of my free time should be spent here. I also want to have a bigger impact at work. Spending more time on work related things is a clear way to accomplish this. I probably should be spending more time with my girlfriend instead of blogging. I've been periodically feeding a sour dough starter, and making bread. As I mentioned previously I should probably practice tap dance more. I have a backlog of learning and development books that I would like to get through. At the same time there are things I want to write about, what I am reading on substack, more work related things. It can be hard to know how to allocate your time, but it's a good problem to have!