A Month of Blog

If you are going to take on a difficult challenge declare your intentions publicly. So that way you at least you have the fear of shame to motivate you.

Thirty to ninety day initiatives have worked for me in the past. My first challenge helped to kick my Diet Coke habit (clean for over two years). Another time I conquered my Warcrack addiction (although I’ll re-register every few months and level up one or two levels before losing interest). So these challenges can work. My wife keeps trying to get me to completely kick the soda habit, and it’s worked for extended trials. Although I have to really want to keep going afterwards for it to really work. And some challenges I won’t even accept. For example, the “No Coffee Challenge” is a non-starter. I love you honey, but please stop trying to get between me and my coffee.

So here’s the next challenge: “A Month of Blog”.

• Every day of January I have to post a blog article on any topic.
• Write articles 140 words or greater. Inspired by Twitter’s 140 character limit.
• Write informative topics. Not just fluff.
• Spend one hour or less on the article.

What I’m hoping to do by this is a kind of “shock therapy” for writing. Hopefully after this exercise I’ll develop a rhythm for writing. I’d like to feel as comfortable writing my thoughts as verbalizing them.

What do I need from you? Criticism. A few weeks back I got some really great criticism from some friends about grammar and spelling mistakes. Despite being frustrated with the comments after a while I hope they understand that I definitely internalized the feedback and appreciate they cared enough to comment.

Wish me luck. Call out my typos. And if there’s something you’d like me to write about, let me know that too.