Blogging for 34 Days Straight!

As you have probably already noticed, I have been blogging every day since February 26th.

Why?

Well, as many of you know, I have joined an accelerated apprenticeship program called Praxis, and this is month three – the writing module. One of the exercises for this month is a 30-day blogging challenge. I love a good challenge, and I’m not alone in my endeavor – my fellow Praxians who are also in month 3 are doing it with me!

So, why 34 days when the official blogging challenge is technically only 30 days long? Two reasons.

I started on the 26th of February because I needed to blog about my SWOT analyses for my February project.
March has 31 days so I will be blogging every day up to at LEAST March 31st.

Thus, 4 extra days. Maybe I’ll even blog on April 1st (which also happens to be Easter Sunday, crazy as that seems) to make it a nice, satisfying number 35. You know, maybe I’ll just keep going and never stop! That’s one thing that I hope to do actually – get into a habit of blogging more regularly.

You see, when I first started this blog back in September of 2017, my original intent was to blog every day for 30 days straight. Unfortunately, I ended up missing a day because I was busy or something (I know…excuses), so I contented myself to blogging every OTHER day for 30 days, which I accomplished! After that, I wanted to take a break from blogging so often, so I tied myself down to once per week. But eventually, that slipped into about 3ish times per month.

My goals for this month are as follows:

To become a better writer through writing every day, submitting some of my articles to third-party publications, and getting constructive feedback from my peers once a week.
To get in the habit of blogging more regularly – even if I eventually cut back to once a week again, I want to stick with a scheduled routine.
Create fun, engaging, and educational content for my readers and potential business partners!

I think the reason why I didn’t stick to my commitment before was that I lacked community and positive peer pressure. What I mean is, when you have a community of like-minded people all headed in the same direction, you are more likely to stick with your commitments. Why? Because you (hopefully) respect the association you have chosen, you see others moving in the direction you want to go, and you don’t want to get left behind. It creates positive peer pressure. No one is yelling at you to get things done, but you feel positive pressure to do so because others are doing it. There are others around you who are moving forward with or without you. Even better, these people will often encourage you to move forward with them and celebrate with you when you succeed.

See? No one is trying to force me to blog every day, but they are leading with their actions which make me want to blog every day. That’s the key to positive peer pressure. Don’t tell others WHAT to do – SHOW them.

Coming from the other side…when you have people joining your positive group from the outside and they’re all new to this, I’d recommend a few things. First, love people where they’re at, then encourage them to become more through your actions.

So, long story short, I’m blogging for at least 34, probably 35, days. I hope you’ll join me by at least reading what I write, or maybe even by writing yourself 😉

Also, I am going to be starting a tutorial on YouTube pretty soon on how to start your own blog for free, so stay tuned!

Until next time,

Hope Frances