One down, eleven to go!

I have never before been so excited about the last day of January! I am happy to say that I missed only one day in January for my blogging every day commitment. It has been challenging, and there has been severe temptation to post often about how hard it is to post, but I have resisted!

Some of the hits of January

Ghostwriter, Ricky Gervais, Social media, Eastwood, Via Appia, Starbucks

Here are some of the things that have helped me keep at it:

• It has been wonderful knowing that my 2011 resolution coincided with the WordPress Postaday challenge because it has made me feel like part of a larger group. I know that there are others out there trying to come up with something insightful and meaningful to share with the world at large, and it has helped. It has also helped curb the urge to whine. The WordPress hints and directions have made me feel like I belong to a club!
• It has been useful for me to think of the daily blog in terms of weekly columns. Given that I have decided to blog about life and social media, I struggled the first few days about finding ideas that are worth blogging about. The weekends were particularly hard. The idea of focusing on non-profits on Saturday and using the tidbits of my weekly research on Sunday has helped hugely. It has served as a master plan when I think of the week ahead.
• It has been wonderful to have no plan for the rest of the week. It allows me to look at each day and each life experience as potential fodder for the blog. It has made me frame a lot more things in the context of social media and that has been exciting as it has fired interesting connections inside my brain! Here is an argument for blogging as an educational tool!
• I am training to think myself like a long-distance runner – the idea is to think in terms of longer milestones. So, I am celebrating my first successful month and hoping to fake my brain into thinking in larger chunks of time….not sure it is working.
• I am enjoying the process of playing around with the blog appearance as much as the writing. There is pleasure in tweaking the appearance and in figuring out additional widgets and other accessories. I am toying with the idea of changing themes every month.
• I have tried to not obsess about numbers as that kind of sucks the joy out of the experience. While I am writing for an audience, this is also an experiment for my personal theories about writing and blogging and I want to keep that front and center in my head.

Here is wishing everyone in this Daily Post Challenge a fresh bout of inspiration and phenomenal creativity for February!