Blogging Mojo

My blogging mojo seems to be back. Last year I posted almost every day and on average just a little over once per day. This year started with an ambitious plan which has been a little less auspicious. I am starting to see a bit of a turn around and I started to think about how and why. So I thought about how I was doing this and I thought I would share it with you.

I initially started with a much smaller plan. Most years before 2017 I have had a month where I have gone out to write a blog post every day. This was down to having a reason to do it. One year I posted very little across the year. In 2015 I had the sum total of 25 posts. My plan became that in one month in 2016 I would do more posts than I had done in the previous year. This gave me a great feel good effect. Things dropped off for a bit after that but I still ended up doing three times as many posts that year as I had done the year before. I think the key here is small, achievable goals and follow this up with other small achievable goals. In 2017 the plan became to do the same thing in January. Then it became a few more months, and a few more. Then it got to a nice round number of posts. Swapping and changing all the while.

As part of what I have been doing I created a challenge for myself which I ended up calling The New Cruelty. This gives me, amongst other things, a minimum number of figures to paint every week and an intention to play at least one game per week. This gives me something to blog about. If there is always progress, then there is always something to look at and talk about.

This year has been hard because I knew it was going to be difficult to top last years numbers. If you are having a similar problem then learn to accept it. It is what it is. Find a way to do something without over facing yourself and keep doing it. What I have done has taken a bit of time to work up to it. I am not sure I will keep up the almost daily posting but I am looking to post much more often. Maybe you want to take smaller steps if not baby steps.

Over the years I have suffered from what I call Project Fatigue. In terms of what I paint, I like to mix up what figures are on the bench. If there is a painting event I might get involved in that to, especially if it is of interest to me and it's not something I would paint all the while. This keeps me interested in what I am doing. Chopping and changing might not work for you if you really like one area of the hobby. However you may wish to reframe that if you are painting an army or armies. You might just want to doing something a bit different, chopping and changing to keep you interest up. Another way is to have what I call Background Projects. Figures that are not really my main focus but fulfil one of my over all goals. They are there when I fancy a break or I end up with too much paint on the palette. This gives me other options too blog about.

Having specific things going on during the week is always a big help. In the last few years I have had a regular game night and spent some time at the local FabLab. This gives me something else to do and a whole wealth of subjects to talk about.