I’m done! Across one month, thirty-one days, I’ve produced one (sometimes more than one) blog post per day! This is my second year doing the Blaugust challenge, and while both time I succeeded and finished the month, this time felt a lot easier. Mainly, that had to do with my Future Learn courses, which gave me plenty to talk about, and meant I didn’t need to crawl around various websites trying to find a topic that was relevant and inspired me to write something meaningful about it.
What I learned from this year’s Blaugust
As I mentioned above, having a topic to start with definitely helps, and also gives this blog some kind of continuity, rather than just bouncing from subject to subject, or (something I’ve been frequently guilty of!) planning to go back to a topic and then not doing it.
Also, posts really don’t have to be that long. Back in university, I remember reading a book which claimed that the best posts should be no more than 200-300 words in length. Of course, I never stuck to that back then, because I felt it would never be enough to articulate what I want to say. Sometimes it still isn’t, but if I’m just writing about a single subject, it’s enough space to make my point without starting to go in depth to the point where I have to write an awful lot to make sure everything makes sense.
I frequently wrote several posts at a time, rather than one per day. While this might not be entirely in the spirit of Blaugust, they were all written within August and it definitely took some pressure off for days when I was busy, or travelling etc. This also helped with the planning side of things- I could write several posts on a similar topic and schedule them.
But perhaps most importantly, I really got the learning bug over this month, and I think maybe it’s time to look for something for long term and formal as my career progresses. I’ve already started getting in contact with some organisations and if I do decide to go ahead, I’ll make sure to post my notes here! Posting my Future Learn course notes turned out to be a free learning aid, as I had to totally understand what I was writing about to order to make something that would be understandable to others and I’d like to continue with that.
Clare@Blog 