ONE year of blogging! (some insights)

This month has marked the end of the first year since I started blogging. There were some lessons I had learned from other areas of my life, along with some experimentation that helped me maintain and benefit from this hobby. I’ll write down some of those insights.

🍃1. Don’t be too forceful with work

Writing is creative. Sometimes you feel more creative than other times. There were some days when I didn’t feel like looking at my blog, much less writing something for it. Instead of getting too worried about it (what’s the need? no one’s suffering if I don’t write anyway 😅) I would just take a break from it and do other things.

There is, however, the idea of consistency also helping with creative work. While I was not actively writing for my blog, I still kept journalling daily which helps me stay in the habit of writing.

🎥2. Recording life lessons in detail

I found writing to be an excellent way of storing away the life lessons I have been learning. If I look at the current period of my life, including the last 2-3 years, in particular, they have been very fertile with life lessons about maturing and growing up.

Even after a few months of writing about those lessons, I find it highly valuable to go back and read my old posts. I believe it is because when you are going through a certain phase in your life, your understanding, thoughts, and feelings attached to that phase are very high resolution.

These can be emotions and thoughts that you are experiencing for the first time in your life. It is hard to reproduce those insights with the same detail in hindsight, even though you may feel wiser having gone through it.

Sometimes when we are growing up, we end up incorporating certain practices into our daily lives and they become nonchalantly performed habits. But it is possible that we carelessly let go of those habits because we forgot about why we learned them in the first place.

If you have a “high resolution” record of those insights, it’s easier to recall the importance of those concepts and continue holding on firmly to them.

👌3. Flexible Consistency > Excellence

At least for beginners, this is a great mindset to have. It keeps you going long enough to become more comfortable with what you’re doing.

When I was younger, I would always seek to aim high in about everything I did. I learned later that this mindset can get too exhausting, and cause you to become ungrateful, frankly an unpleasant person to be with, and stressed out.

Many times during my writing journey, I had to choose between staying stuck and not producing anything out of the perfectionistic paralysis or accepting mediocrity enough that it would free me up enough to keep writing.

Because of this value in imperfection, I have decided to let go of perfectionism and only deliberately use it as a tool when I really want to, and as long as it doesn’t interrupt the flow of my work.

🪜4. Adjust your own expectations

When I shared the blog with some people I knew, they shared their expectations of me writing a book now in excitement. The truth is, writing a book is a lot of work, and so the pressure is on. But I realized that it is better for me to keep writing here than to get stuck while thinking about the pressure I would need to face trying to write a book.

For some reason, we have this culture of always wanting to one-up ourselves once we have tried something new. That is a great thing, it’s can lead to a lot of growth and innovation. But on the other side of the coin, you have to realize that you don’t always have to follow through with such expectations from others or yourself.

As I mentioned above, sometimes it’s better to put the work in to maintain what you’re already doing rather than trying to chase something that you think is shinier and better. Contentment is also something that can and should be practiced.

🪟5. Making your own open doors

Perhaps it is the nature of writing, having to do with juggling ideas, or perhaps it is just something about trying something new, that when you do so your mind starts to open up to new ideas.

When I started writing, I realized that sometimes we get so stuck trying to knock on other people’s doors to get certain opportunities but in our world, especially in the age of the internet, there is so much scope for opening up your own doors and making a path for yourself.

You don’t have to wait a lot just to get rejection emails, there are a lot of things you might be able to do on your own already.

Granted, writing doesn’t really make me money, but I didn’t need anyone’s green light to start doing it. I didn’t need someone to open their door for me just so I could begin to benefit from writing. This is quite an encouraging perspective to have.

Once people have an online presence, it becomes easier to connect with others which can increase the chances of more doors opening up later on.

😸6. Your tribe awaits you 🙂

Sometimes when we are interested in something, the people around us may not be interested in the same thing to the same degree. It gets harder to grow and become better and sharper at what you’re made to do when that happens.

However, the great thing about the internet is that once you put yourself out there you can find people who are interested in the same things as you*. You can even find people who are doing the things you like in a better and more skilled way and gain inspiration to grow. These factors can motivate you to keep going.

(*this can also be a bad thing because you may have a virtual echo chamber of people who think like you when you also need people who think differently from you to become well-rounded instead of extreme in your perspective)

Not everyone is interested in writing or thinking a lot about personal development topics so I have really enjoyed the feedback from people who do like these things and checking out their work too.

That’s all. I am interested in seeing where this writing thing takes me in the coming months and years.

Thank you for reading! 🙂