Didn't really give myself any safe guards on this one did I? I committed to "once/week" instead of allowing myself "at least twice/month". And writing this blog post has definitely been harder to commit to the once/week. In fact, the friend who introduced me to the Healthy and Happy for 2019 and is currently the only reader of this blog, had to give me a little nudge when I hadn't been posting once/week (again my list of thank yous to her continues to extend).
But here I am with what started out as a few days late and is now a week late for my once/week goal. The important thing is that it does make me happy to post things regardless of the time frame so let's do it.
I don't actually consider myself a blogger but did really enjoying writing the blog "Vanbatical". Initially it was a joint blog post with my husband and in the beginning, he was WAY more keen to get it going than I was. But I started writing and found I really liked it. It was not only a way to give myself purpose (which I very much struggled with in a 6 month trip living in a van where I often felt I didn't have a purpose) but also a way to share a story which, for an introvert, is often hard to do in the spoken word. The written word to me seems easier and still gives that satisfaction of sharing the story. So back to the vanbatical blog and the end of the vanbatical but I still wanted to write. And yes, I could journal but there is something about "publishing" something (and sharing your story) whether it is going to be 1 person reading it or 200 people reading it that makes you really think about how you are telling the story (as well as editing that story).
But my first challenge was coming up with something to blog about where I would have ideas each week. My first blog about the vanbatical was fairly easy. Content could be - where we were geographically what neat features were we experiencing or the challenges of living in a van.
So wanting to start right away and not feeling many other ideas come about, I decided to blog about the healthy and happy 2019 goals. And the blog also seems to be serving another purpose - accountability to make sure I am reviewing them and adhering to my healthy and happy goals regularly (or at least once within a 15 week period.).
The second challenge though is writing in a way that does not sound condescending or patronizing or promoting myself as "look at me", I am doing this or I am doing that and you should too! I especially found this hard with the making food from scratch post. How to write about what I am doing which is making me happy without making anyone who reads it feel like they should be doing the same thing. And in this pondering on "tone", it got me thinking about self help books in general (which I have been reading a lot of lately). And not that I am trying to write a self help blog or tell someone what they should do but a self help book (or book editor) must also have to decide whether the tone of the book is "do this in this way and it will help" or "hey, here are some ideas, hope they help". Anyway, now that I have catered to my inner critic who worried about me appearing like a "know it all", let's move on.
The third challenge is as discussed above - keeping up with it. But this post is feeling done and while I am here, I may need to peak at goal #7 so I can at least start to think about what I have been doing to meet it and what I am going to write for it too...
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