My year of daily blogging

Like many others in the medium universe, I was inspired by Jonas Ellison’s recent blog post, “How one year of daily blogging changed my life.” I thought the title sounded interesting and I was genuinely impressed by someone who could consistently do something every day for an entire year — a goal that I’ve often set for myself but never been able to accomplish.

I have a long list of daily goals that I wish I could achieve at least once every 24 hours. I want to practice the piano every day. I want to read every night — and social media doesn’t count. I want to walk a minimum of 10,000 steps. I want to stand frequently so that I don’t become sedentary. I want to brush my teeth twice a day for a full two-minutes. The list goes on.

And yes, these are real things that sadly, I spend more time thinking about than actually doing.

The problem is, I’ve set myself up for continuous failure because I’m not committed to any of them. I try to practice the piano a few times a week but I certainly don’t play every day. When I realized that my average step count was 3,500 steps — embarrassingly low! — I gave up on that dream. I tried standing instead of sitting at my desk for ONE DAY and then decided that standing wasn’t for me. My hand would cramp up when I used my electric tooth brush so I’d jump ahead a few teeth until two minutes of diligent brushing slowly became one.

I feel that it’s important to confess these small but consistent failures because it helps to show you the magnitude of what I’m committing to with daily blogging. I also think that this blog will be fun for my future self to look back on. I’m almost certain that in a year from now, I’ll have mastered the art of two-minute teeth brushing. I’m also pretty certain that my step count will not have improved.

I talked about my dream to start daily blogging with my boss, friend and media mentor Drew Coffman who writes on Medium and his own blog The Extratextual. He talked about the numerous benefits that he’s experienced since writing consistently over the last few months, and encouraged me to start writing as well. In true Drew fashion, his exacts words were, “I hope that you write. And I hope that you write on Medium because it’s cool.”

So here I am, blogging on Medium and hoping that this daily commitment to writing will help me learn more about myself and my creative process. I’m looking forward to discovering the benefits that daily blogging will no doubt have on my soul and my life. You’re welcome to come along with me on this journey but there’s no pressure.

Now my first blog is done! Just 364 more posts to go — but who’s counting?