I Regret Nothing

Today is the last day of Blaugust. What does this mean? That myself and a bunch of other folks have put in a lot of time and effort into trying to blog daily (or at least post 31 times during the month if we couldn’t make it daily)!

Going into Blaugust, I thought I’d have a fairly easy time since I was blogging three to four times a week to begin with. What’s adding on a few more days that only need to be 250 words at least, right? Well, I learned very quickly that I don’t work very well like that. Due to real world (and some digital) obligations, posts had to sit by the wayside.

A move and bad luck hit me at the beginning of the month, followed by about two solid weeks of “overtime” (it’s not overtime when you’re salaried…), and hitting real-life burnout to the point of physical and emotional health issues surfacing. But I was able to rearrange time, and even carve some out when I didn’t think I’d have any.

I learned a lot from this endeavor. First and foremost that a daily format is not something that I can guarantee as a commitment. It’s something I’d like to aim to try to do my best at, but it’s not feasible to say it will happen with all of my prior obligations. And honestly, sometimes I really don’t have anything to write about other than, “I worked today, and then we cleared bosses in raid we’ve cleared before. The End.”.

I did learn how to utilize my draft posts, and how to keep them better organized. I’m a person that writes bits of ideas and such in my draft posts area so that they’re all together, but they’re usually untitled and just a jumble of ideas and words. I learned very quickly to pre-label and upload pictures ahead of time, even if I wasn’t going to use them all, to make it easier to create a final post from the jumble of a draft that I had going.

I also came to accept that bouncing off of ideas posted by the blogging community is not bad, even if it’s not much original thought from my end. It can be just as great to acknowledge the person(s) involved in the topic-at-hand, thank them for their time and thoughts, and then throw one or two in. It keeps the writing flowing, and it’s a great way to show link-love rather than just saying, “Here, go check them out. The End.”. It also helps foster a community of bloggers.

And last, but certainly not least, I reinforced how much time and effort go into endeavors like this on the creator’s end. I’m no stranger to running community events. If you’re in WildStar, you know this to be true. But I’ve always seen those as easier to manage, or whatever, than something on this scale. The events I run are one-shots, mainly. This is an effort that took an entire month on Bel‘s end–and he’s super amazing for doing it. 

So thanks, Bel, for encouraging all of us to participate in this craziness with you. I’m sure you’re glad it’s The End.