To Blog or not To Blog – Part ll

Even the books for dummies seemed beyond me! (3 minute read)

Step 3 – I’ll do it myself – the announcement and the research

I enlisted the support of my family, then announced to friends that I was going to experiment with teaching character virtues and start an accountability blog to track my progress (or lack thereof). Then, it was off to the library to borrow books on all thing blogging related. I also directed my enquiries to Mr Google, and I ordered ‘Blogging for Dummies’ (2019) edition from Booktopia, so that I could read about blogging whilst enjoying my morning cup of tea.

Luckily for my blogging experiment, the first book I read was just lovely. It was like having an encouraging conversation with an old friend. Thank you Mr Schaefer, and you Mr Smith. Your gentle, warm tone inspired me. However, the more I read (other books and blogs), the more confused and intimidated I became. Although all the books and blogs were encouraging, they opened my eyes to the many technical issues, decisions and possible pitfalls involved in blogging. All of this in a language which was so foreign to me it may as well have been written in ‘Martian‘.

Step 4 – Put your money where your mouth is

The next step involved another long chat with Ms Google. There is an incredible amount of information about blogging on the internet. Yes, it’s a bit of a rabbit warren, and you can lose hours clicking on various links, but at the end of the day you can start a blog after you have done your research. Nevertheless, by the time I had purchased a domain and found an appropriate host, I felt like I had run a marathon.

Step 5 – Publish a post

I won’t bore you with the gazillion technical issues I had prior to publishing my first blog post. In the end I probably overthought the whole thing and followed so much advice regarding what I needed running in the background, that I mixed things up and got myself into a technical kerfuffle. I felt like quitting and thought it would be 4,003,221 tears from now before I could face the blog again.

The answer

You really can’t ‘unannounce’ an announcement. The only thing that kept me going was the commitment I had made to myself and others regarding this year long experiment and the accountability blog. So that’s why, for me, the answer was ‘To Blog’. Obviously the fun bit is just around the corner, as this is now my third post, and it was a walk in the park compared to the first two 🙂

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” Nelson Mandela