By the time you’re reading this, I’ve made more than a hundred revisions on my website/blog.

I’ve changed things around so many times including…:

• Domain names: 1 time, from Singular Faith to Solitary Grace. That’s a story for another time.
• Theme: More than 12 times in 3 years. Even now, I don’t think I’ve found one I’m entirely happy with. I need a theme that prioritizes readability, clean typography, and minimal distraction.
• Fonts: Ahh, my favourite ‘project’, more than 18 times per theme change. I’m currently using the default from my current theme, which saves loading time, and space.
• Font colours: Hmm, another favourite ‘project’; multiply each font change by 10, and that comes to 180 changes, not bad. I’ve now settled on the default font colour from my current theme.
• Headers and footers: As much as 18 times.
• Background colour: About 5 times already on the current theme alone. More changes to come, yay.
• Plugins and widgets: More than 11 times already. Widgets and I have a ‘widgets-are-distracting-I’m-removing-them-no-they-help-visitors-navigate’ kind of love.

My point is, there will always be something to change on your site or blog’s aesthetic. But there comes a time when you must sit down, write your article/essay/review/memoir/short story/poem/whatever, take that photograph, record that video, and publish it. And continue that every day, or once a week, or whenever you decide.

Otherwise, there will be nothing there. As I mentioned above, what you decide on doesn’t even have to be text, it can be a photograph; you can even publish your poems, song lyrics, random thoughts, your favourite quotes about your favourite subjects, your family recipes, anything, as long as it resonates with you, and you think or know might help someone in some way. You’ll never know if what you know can help someone unless you share it and release it. And your blog is the perfect place to do that.

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

attributed to e.e. cummings

It’s Okay To Be Afraid

Especially when you’re releasing whatever you’ve written, photographed, or recorded, to the public. And you don’t know who the public is or what they’ll do. You’re afraid that someone who knows you will read or see whatever you’ve posted and will criticize it, laugh at it, or ignore it.

And that’s okay. You can’t control what others do, or how they’ll react to your work. All you can do, must do, is keep creating.

You Have A Blog, So Blog

And to blog means actually creating something, and publishing it so that it goes live into the wonderful world-wide-web.

Remember your reason for wanting a blog in the first place. You’ve taken the necessary steps to get a blog, now make use of it.

There wasn’t any excuse I didn’t use; I used all kinds of excuses in the book, and a few I made up, to not write. I blamed ‘writer’s block’ but I hadn’t even written anything. I worked on the back-end of my site for months, tinkering away, until, finally, I just got tired of making excuses and I published my first post. Even that first post took me days of agonising over sentences, paragraphs, my tone and writing style, before I took a deep breath and clicked on ‘publish’.

Publishing that first post, and the ones after it, gradually made things easier for me, though if you go through my previous posts, you’ll find that I’ve missed days/weeks/months here and there. But I’d like to think that I’m making progress.

Your Blogging Intentions

It’s a new year, so don’t you think you ought to make one?

If you’ve set your intentions, good for you. Just make sure that they work for you, and help you realise your overall goals.

Setting a regular blogging schedule will also help you. It can be daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or fortnightly. A writer, whose long-form work I like, only updates her blog once a month, sometimes every two months. It’s okay if you miss a day or a week or many, just get back to it. Pick-up from where you left of.

As with everything else, in all areas of our lives, we also have to be intentional with our creativity, creations, and blogs.

What you blog about is entirely up to you.

Writing Pompts

Writing things down always helps. Or, if you prefer talking, then why not record your response to these prompts, and publish them on your social media channel?

• List down your blogging intentions for this week/month/year: I intend to…
• What do you hope to achieve through your blog this year? Improve your writing? Be more creative? Find your writing style and voice? Improve your cooking, photography, poetry, or song writing skills, etc.?
• What topics do you blog about? Why?

Share your thoughts, and a link to your blog in the comments section below.