Learning How to Blog
I definitely partake in the practice of ‘verbal diarrhea’ with my blogging. I have a thought — let me spill it out onto the page for others to see. It’s something I’ve been sufficiently skilled at doing. Homework assignments for 500 word opinion pieces. Easy peazy. I was good at writing a whole lot of nothing in as many words as I needed.
I don’t think I’ve ever truly wanted to write better. I never really wanted to become a writer or to be more eloquent in my writing.
But it would be an amazing process of documenting and seeing the progression of my writing style grow over the years through a blog. From blog #1 to blog #500, knowing the styles, the way to communicate ideas, learning how to write with a purpose or conviction. So here’s the beginning of my journey. Thanks to Squarespace for a ridiculous library of skills to learn, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and try to grow as a writer, while simultaneously documenting my growth.
I’m starting to take a course called “How to Create Content Consistently | 7 Day Blogging Challenge” by Filipas Canelas so as part of that course, I’ll be documenting my development and updating this blogpost as I complete additional challenges.
Day 0 Challenge
Establishing a framework for my blog.
How Often Will I post? - Once per week.
When will the post go live? - Sunday at 1pm.
How often will I write to successfully meet this posting schedule? - I will write at least 500 words every other day. At this time, I’m not sure how long my posts will be or the exact format but 500 words every other day facilitates 4 days of writing so 2000 words
Day 1 Challenge
So my first challenge is to generate 3 blog ideas based on a single topic to exercise an abundance mindset to blogging, strengthen my targeting of specific sub-audiences. My main overarching blog idea is to document the different aspects of my life with an overall theme of self-improvement. I would describe myself as a pessimist or practical realist with stoic tendencies but I think by meticulously documenting my thoughts via writing, I may ultimately force upon myself realizations, biases in my thinking and vulnerabilities that may resonate more clearly with a written paper trail.
So I think a good starting point would be to blog about where I am in my life right now.
Who I am?
What do I think?
Why do I think I think that way?
and What do I want in my life?
The ultimate flex and ‘willing something into existence’ moment would be a reflection 5-10 years down the road and having a "A-ha moment” of how far I’ve come in my thinking, in my professional career, and in my personal life. So 3 potential blog ideas include:
Why am I apathetic?
10 Chips on My Shoulders
Why I will succeed?
Do those titles sound cringy enough but slightly weird enough for you to want to read? Then my objective is successfully accomplished.
Day 2 Challenge
Build a blog post based on another author’s blog or commentary. I anticipate some challenge with this particular task primarily because I don’t often consume other authors’ content, especially if it is written. Although I want to start a blog, I primarily consume video content - I am always on YouTube. So who can I rely on to grab content from.
Typical inspirations for me include: Gary Vee, Stoics such as Marcus Aureleus and perhaps deep work/performance optimization thought leaders such as Thomas Frank, Tim Ferriss, or Ali Abdaal.
For the sake of practicing, we’ll go with Gary Vee and Social Listening