It’s officially the end of Blogmas!
Blogging every day for 24 days hasn’t been easy and there were some highs and some very lows. But it taught me a lot and I’m very glad I did it.
To be completely honest, I’m unsure if I’ll be doing it again next year. But maybe it’s like child birth.. they say the only reason you have a second is because your mind blocks out the trauma of the first.
Either way, here are twenty four things I have learned from twenty four days of Blogmas 2018.
1. The longer I spend writing it, the more reads and engagement it gets.
2. Using the speech-to-text keyboard function results in twice as many words, but half the punctuation.
3. The best way to beat writer’s block is setting a rule that you can’t sleep till something is published.
4. I can survive on less sleep than I thought.
5. Having someone to be accountable to is a great way to stick to a goal. (Thanks Pam – MyPresentTense)
6. I have a picture on my camera roll for almost every scenario you can think of. I didn’t realise how many pictures I take and I’m grateful to myself for being a hoarder.
7. Editing and formatting take twice as long as writing.
8. Taking notes whilst in the country, leads to a more extensive and detailed blog than trying to remember everything once you get home.
9. I have visited more places than I can probably blog about. Running out of destination guides to write should never be an excuse.
10. Writing about being LGBT is 1 million times scarier to publish than anything travel related.
11. When you’re pressed for time, and still need to publish something, picture blogs are in excellent hack.
12. December is a ridiculous month to set a challenge to do anything daily.
13. Blogging from a moving car on a laptop while hot-spotting from your phone will result in travel sickness.
14. Despite knowing I needed a blog per day, I consistently started writing at 11pm. (not sure if this counts as a lesson because I never learnt).
15. When doing a daily challenge, plan ahead and have at least some pre-written for busy days.
16. I over use the word “perfect”.
18. Having Instagram posts lined up to correlate with each blog was over ambitious and never happened.
17. My mother is my number one fan. (Thanks for reading and liking every single post)
19. I don’t adapt well to change. (Thanks WordPress for doing a full website update mid-month).
20. I have no idea how to appear on Google searches.
21. Adding Amazon affiliate links takes a lot of hours.
22. Crying at 11pm and protesting against writing isn’t productive.
23. Challenging yourself to write daily produces 24 more blogs than you would’ve done without the challenge.
24. Despite being mildly sleep deprived and needing a small blogging hiatus, I haven’t fallen out of love with writing of The Jenna Way.
Bonus: 25. Get yourself a partner that cheers you on every day to keep writing and never tires of listening to your ideas, complaints and meltdowns.
And that’s it from me and blogmas 2018! I can’t wait to see what happens with The Jenna Way in 2019. But until then – I’m blogged out and I’m taking a week (or two) off!
