Starting New — Moving to PosthavenI started daily blogging nearly 400 days ago. My objective, early on, was naively simple: hit publish every single day.
I started daily blogging nearly 400 days ago. My objective, early on, was naively simple: hit publish every single day.
As someone who had never been a particularly good writer, that was a lofty goal. Mount Everest sized. I started with 30 days. I publicly committed to pushing publish every single day for one month. When I say “public,” I mean to my whole entire collection of what was literally 3 viewers.
This was not the first time I had tried to start a blog. Like many of my other “novel” ideas, I had found some excuse to give up. But not this time. This time I would not be stopped.
Somehow, someway, I did it. I did not miss a single day.
And I credit a lot of that success to one simple mindset I employed super early on, before I even typed a word. That was the idea of cutting out all excuses.
I started writing on Medium — the easiest and cheapest (free) — platform I could find. I did not need to worry about a custom theme, or comments or setting up a domain. It was me and my keyboard staring at a blank screen. It was just the daily workout I needed to stimulate creativity and exercise my mind.
And that worked.
Don’t get me wrong it was really really hard. But that was the point! No one was forcing me to write. No one was checking in on me to make sure that I had hit publish.
I was the one liable. From early on when literally no one was watching to when I started writing in front of an audience of tens of thousands, I was responsible. If I missed a day — I had no one to blame but myself.
I kept improving. To me, improvement meant communicating better.
I was not focused on the conventional metrics like views and audience. I just kept focusing on myself and how I was using the keyboard to share my thoughts. As long as I was thinking clearer and improving on that end — I would keep going.
And so I did.
About 6 months into my “journey,” however, I switched my primary platform to WordPress. I built a super simple site, using the default theme, and just started writing there.
It was a very similar process to Medium and I did not lose any momentum from it. WordPress even had a plugin to cross-publish to Medium so essentially I was doubling my reach by publishing in multiple channels!
WordPress was great. But I think it is important to build content that lasts forever. And WordPress required me to keep updating and managing different aspects of the site. Of course it is more customizable, and a great way to blog.
But I wanted something with less overhead so I could just focus on the words. I also wanted something I knew would last forever.
In case you have not noticed — I am starting fresh, this time on Posthaven.
My old blog of course still exists, but all of my new content will be published here! I even got a fancy new domain name for it -> https://gonen.blog
Anyways ~ I am super excited for this new clean look! Let me know what you think. Hope you stick with me 🙂
Originally published at gonen.blog.
By jordangonen on April 12, 2017.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.