#nanoblopomo

Curveballs

There seems to be some rule that as soon as I give myself a big challenge and start on it within a short period of time life throws a curveball at me to make the challenge all the more challenging. It happened within the first few weeks of my 365 daily creativity project and now just a few days into a month of daily blogging I am sick. It started out as a sore throat last night, now today I am full blown sick. I get one "I'm sick" blog post out of it. Then I need to keep generating content while feeling like crud. I can do it! No big deal.  

Sick day watercolor abstracts in my sketchbook while I sip tea with honey.  

Sick day watercolor abstracts in my sketchbook while I sip tea with honey.  

Failed but not a failure.

Coming off the high of completing October's #inktober Instagram daily ink drawing and sharing challenge I signed up for the daily blogging challenge #nanoblopomo as a way to improve my blogging habit. It started out pretty well but about halfway through it I started resenting the challenge and remembered doing it last year and all it accomplished was blog burnout. So I stopped and promised myself weekly blogging combined with daily drawing, painting and Instagram sharing and enjoyed the rest of the month of November.  Ready for new challenges for December!

image.jpg

Groove

I'm grooving with my paint and watercolor this weekend. Hard to pull myself away to blog or do anything else. Everything seems to be clicking into place after much hard work and failure. I credit a lot of my progress to sticking with #inktober and now I am going to stick with blogging. 

image.jpg

The threat of burn out.

How to avoid blogger burnout? I have gotten through most of my second week of daily blogging and it is still hard. I remember blogging daily last November and then not blogging much at all for December and January because I was burnt out by the constant pressure of daily blogging. Unlike the daily drawing challenges I have completed blogging is not super fun for me. I think it is a worthwhile activity that has positive impact on my life, but for me pressure of blogging makes it feel more like a chore. Morning Pages is becoming a more enjoyable activity and habit but that is my personal writing with no pressure for anybody to like what I have to say. I am going to keep going with the challenge but be mindful of burning out and with a plan for December and January because my goal is a sustainable habit that I enjoy doing. How do more regular bloggers do it? 

Morning Pages

After months off this Morning Pages writing is extremely effective at opening up my mind and generating blog topics and content. Getting through a month of daily blog posting for #nanoblopomore would probably be a failure already if I didn't start up Morning Pages in late October. I came up with three rough drafts just this morning for me to expand on later. I love it! This leads me to believe that I should find a way to make Morning Pages work for me year round and not just during the dark and cold winter months. If I want to keep blogging and I do then I need to write more or my mind will just be visual. The visual is obviously super important but adding text to my visual thoughts and journey and being able to express myself with words is pretty important for eventual success.