Learning about blogging on my bike
I have been participating in the 31 days to a better blog challenge for 28 days, and I must say I will be sad when it ends. Not because I don’t have enough things to do to finish said challenge, as a matter of fact, it will probably take me more than another 31 days to do it. No, it’s the community of people who have formed around it. All slogging through a similar experience in very different ways. It’s been great journeying with you, and I hope it goes forward in some new form.
It’s hard to even isolate the daily tasks anymore, so I’m taking a new tack, and bringing forward a new type of reflection. At the beginning of the summer, I attended a workshop with Rita Bailey, during which we came up with an example to apply the learning. The result of which was me getting a new bike. This is the bike I rode in the Providence Bridge Pedal where I learned about Spontaneous Stereotyping and Storytelling. So I’ve been off riding again, this time on a 21 mile trail created on an old railroad bed. I learned a bit about training, and a realized a few things about blogging too.
This bike ride was very much like the 31 day blogging challenge, in that it looked pretty easy at first. It was a gentle uphill grade, but it went on for miles. Sort of like the daily challenges, each one is simple enough, but adding a new one day after day, it accumulates. Just like my thighs on that long hill, I started to feel the burn. Because really to improve your blog, you have to take each challenge and incorporate it into a new way of doing things as you move forward. After two weeks, you are adding 14 new things to an already busy schedule of work and family.
In the center of this 21 mile path, you hit gravel, then mud, then a steep downhill and uphill with loose big gravel. Suddenly, the ride gets a lot harder. There have been some challenge days that felt like that. Great idea, but do I really want to take the time to figure out how to do it? On the ride, I didn’t want to disappoint my husband who was riding with me, and on the challenge, I didn’t want to disappoint the rest of the challenge participants. I had to find a way to keep going.
After a bit more gravel we hit a gentle downhill that was a great relief, and reminded me of the days the challenge tasks were to do something around advertising or monetizing a blog. Yes, I get to rest a bit. But guess what, after getting to the end, we had to turn around and come back up that gentle downhill. More tasks.
Then back through the gravel, the mud, the steep hills with rocks. This time though, it was easier. We knew what was coming, we could pace ourselves. Like the tasks from the earlier days of the challenge are getting easier to incorporate into the blogs.
Eventually we got to the top of what had been the long slow climb uphill. Only this time, it was a glorious several mile downhill coast with the sun streaming through the trees. I hope in a few months the tasks from the challenge will be incorporated into how I do things, and it will feel like a glorious downhill ride. I’m looking forward to it. 
So, instead of going shopping to learn about blogging as per the day 25 task, I went on a bike ride. And I realized I have to ride at my own pace and enjoy the process. Tasks completed, at least they will be in their own time.
