Day 1 — Creating this blog and my plan for it

I procrastinated creating a blog for way too long.

I was overthinking what I would write about, who my audience would be, how I’d develop a writing style, what platform I’d use, whether it would make money, blah, blah, bullshit.

None of that stuff actually matters and it took me a while to realize I was tripping. But tripping is what happens when you skip steps. No more skips, it’s day 1. And for me that means thinking about what I want to do with the blog:

• Improve my writing

• Share my stories

• Develop my teaching skills

• Inspire

• Build an audience

• Flush out ideas

That’s all high-level, but breaking it down into those buckets helped me finally get started.

Improve my writing

The best way to improve at anything is to get the reps in. I was more worried about being bad at writing and picking topics than starting so I could improve. Eventually, I’ll take a course on how to be a better writer, but for now, I’m just going to write. My plan is to just get used to consistently putting out content. The topics will be all over the place. So will the quality.

I plan on emailing out a weekly newsletter with some thoughts and things I’ve learned that week. I’ll also post a few blog posts on random topics both personal and impersonal as well to help me (1) get better at researching and writing (2) help develop my voice and style.

Share my stories

My life is dope. I wake up and generally get to do whatever I want every day. I work out like a nut—70-mile bike rides, 100s of pull-ups and push-ups, tons of yoga, etc. I try and learn new things—salsa, bachata, climbing. I’ve lived in 6 cities since September 2020—Ann Arbor, Austin, Brooklyn, Denver, LA, and San Diego. And I’ve taken a few cross-country road trips in between those.

I leave a ton of room in my life for serendipity. That has led me to some great stories that I want to share. I’m going to try and write them out and do them in podcast form. I mostly want to document them so I never forget, but I also love sharing them so putting them up here is a win-win.

Develop my teaching skills

Writing is a great way to share ideas in a concise way. I want to improve my ability to convey my thoughts in writing. I also want to get better at researching topics. It’s hard to make information interesting, entertaining, and meaningful and that’s what I’m going to try and learn how to do.

Inspire

I haven’t worked a corporate job since April of this year and I’m going to see how long I can keep that up. There’s nothing wrong with them, but I wasn’t getting enjoyment out of the ones that I had. I hope that by sharing how I’ve made that happen, more people feel empowered to create a life and situation that brings them joy. Of course, that looks different for everyone so some of it will just be frameworks. Either way, I hope anyone who reads this consistently feels as inspired as they do entertained or educated.

Build an audience

I don’t want to get ahead of myself on this one. To get readers, I need good content. So that comes first. That being said, I want to grow and help others grow. I want to impact at least one person (hopefully more) with my blog. I appreciate you for making it this far down this post and I hope you keep reading as I post more. Your feedback, good and bad (but especially bad) would be helpful.

Flush out ideas

Like I said before, this blog will be all over the place in topics. Some posts will be things I want to research more, commit to memory, and make easier to find later. If there are any topics you think would be cool for me to look into or write about, let me know! I need the practice.