I received another comment yesterday “When do you find the time to blog?”
I started to think about it and realized that blogging is something that I’ve made into my regular daily routine. When I was a child, my parents had a regular daily routine for my brother and me. As a parent, it was important to have my kids have routines.
As an educator, I developed a routine devoted to the profession. As a Computer Science teacher, I solved all of the problems that we did in class and that I would give students for homework and tests. First of all, it was to make sure that it could be done with the current skills that the students had, was challenging enough to immerse the most motivated of students, and to determine how long it would take. I figure that the keeners would take half the time that I did.
So, when I turned to blogging as a release, I decided to turn it into part of my computer routine. Like most folks, I’m on online in the evening doing this and that. In a consulting position, there is a never ending flow of email so staying on top of it all is important. To that routine, I added blogging.
After all, how long could it take?
Well, in the beginning, it took forever. In the beginning, I probably used the wrong tools and was forever searching for something to say. Many times, I almost decided to pack it in. However, looking critically at time, I found that it became easier and was less of an forced task. Then, it became fun. Then, I realized that by forcing myself to write about something, I was becoming more aware of things. By doing the research or reading for inspiration, I was actually creating a journal or book of my thinking and writing. Now, I’m hooked. I’ve got the right tools with either Scribefire or the Flock editor depending upon what computer I’m using at the time.
I typically have a bunch of half-brainstormed ideas stored on a computer for polishing and will work on something in the evenings mentally or on the computer and then finish it off and publish in the morning. It’s a routine that’s worked very well for me. By giving myself license to write about anything that comes to mind, I can have an opinion and write about just about anything.
The kind comments by folks on the blog, through Twitter, or to my Facebook account make it all worthwhile. The biggest inspiration is to realize that someone actually reads what I’ve got to write.
The best advice that I could give a potential blogger is to consider where you could put a few minutes into your regular routine and then just do it. Over time, you’ll really appreciate your efforts.
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