Last week I was having lunch with a few friends and we started talking about an assignment from a photography class in which one had to take a photo every ten minutes during waking time for 48 hours. Why this assignment? Perhaps it was teaching the habit of seeing a composition in everything: wherever you are, whatever you are doing, there is an opportunity for creativity and mindfulness. And so it is also with a blog a day challenge. You may not realize it as first. But there is an opportunity for personal reflection and mindfulness in every day.
I have fallen off the blog-a-day wagon horribly this month. I won't make excuses, but I will keep blogging as much as I can for as long as it makes sense to do so, possibly, in one form or another, for the rest of my life.
The blog a day is a forced creativity exercise that will hone writing skills and also serve as a record, a way to remember the events of your life and to possibly realize what is truly important. Even if one keeps a professional blog, the blog could be a professional journey of discovery.
However, I may have to start getting more personal in my blogging if I am going to keep this running. Do I use this PSU blog that is aggregated into various staff intranets to do this? I don't know if I can stand to have two blogs.
All this is just to say that my appreciation of blogging practice has increased 1 level over the last two weeks.
Smart and tough question, Brad. I purposefully took my blog out of the aggregation cycle on work sites for a few reasons that I'll talk about f2f, but not here. I've kept a PSU blog that I use for different purposes, but during the OPAD Challenge it gets completely neglected as I post only in the space that is tied to my name.
It has been tough to keep up this month and the strain on my creative muscles has pushed me into new territory. I'm exploring new areas and pushing myself to be more bold, honest, and impassioned. It has been hard, but it does make me stronger. I may be going crazy because of it, but perhaps that is the way it is supposed to be. Writing each day this month has made me think harder than ever before.
I have two PSU blogs. It's not to difficult to manage them, but they are for vastly different things. One of them is solely for updates to my manager and her boss to keep them updated on what I do every two weeks. The other is for work related thoughts, notes from conferences, mumblings, ideas, etc. I haven't entered the personal realm in that one because I am not sure how appropriate or professional it is.
I have failed every time I have tried the blog a day challenge, probably because no one really reads my blog (being a department of one). I guess I need extrinsic feedback. This is why I try to comment on people's blog that are participating in the challenge. It gets me thinking and I hope it keeps them going in some small way if they need it. So I guess I do actually blog most days, I just don't start the original discussion. I might try the challenge again in March, but maybe just do M-F and try that as a first step. If you want to try again, let me know, I'll be sure to respond.