Unblocking my blog
January 6th 2010
So I don’t expect you to have noticed, since you wouldn’t have been here (because there hasn’t been anything much to see) that I haven’t been blogging a whole lot. Despite having a long list of story ‘titles’ and ideas for posts, I seem to be unable to bring myself to actually get any posts written and published.
Screenshot of my blog writing to do list (in Omnifocus)
What is stopping me?!
Well, there is Client Work of course, this is a big one. The last 6 months of 2009 were very intense – it is good to be busy of course, but unfortunately it wasn’t all the good kind of busy (a subject I plan to write about later). And even when it is all good busy, I still think it is important to take sometime out from client work. Not to say that I don’t take time out. I went to a couple conferences last year and I spend plenty of time on twitter and reading peoples blogs. Hell, I spend lots of time commenting on other peoples blogs too but hardly ever writing my own original posts.
I really want to change this, because – to answer the obvious question – “Why do you want to blog anyway?” I want to put something out into the community and I think I have some experiences worth sharing. I often get asked the same question by a few people and that’s when I add it to my blog post ideas list – since I think there might be more people out there interested in it too.
I also just get stuck on it being this big daunting task and admittedly that is because I spend way too long on it. I go about it like I’m writing an article for a magazine or something. I really need to get over this! Hence this dipping-toe-in-water effort of a post which I’m just rattling off, one (okay, maybe 2) read overs before I click that publish button!
What am I going to do about it?
Photo by Judepics on Flickr Well I have set myself a bit of a challenge by signing up to participate in the Project52. “The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year.” This post is now going to seem like a bit of a cop-out, but for me to actually post something about nothing is actually quite a break through, and I’m hoping might unblock the metaphorical sink full of posts sitting here.
Yes, I’m aware of the other piece of bathroom furniture we could be talking about unblocking here, and I think that can go without saying 
Transcript
P52 stats: Week 1, post # 1
Time it has taken me to prepare, write, edit and publish this post: 1:30
Things I had to leave out because I’m going way over time:
- Linking to all those people who do manage to churn out blog posts regularly who prove it can be done alongside client work. (I’ll link to you later when I get round to adding a blogroll – or you can just add your name in the comments below, heh heh!)
- Links to a bunch of blog posts I’ve spent time commenting on lately.
Hi Emily, I’m looking forward to reading more posts from you. Get to it!
Like you I’m thinking yes, a blog, get stuff out there, share, jot down that stuff you’d forget otherwise, enjoy writing again. Unlike you, my blog is still a figment of my imagination, so though I also have an ideas list, I still must make a place for them to live once they’ve also gone through those same birth pangs.
Here’s something someone shared with me today that relates to this predicament: http://bit.ly/3EUYXZ