This is me starting. There’s a moment that you feel every time you know you should just do something and something else gets in the way. The moment I knew I should just start a blog. Or the moment I know if I just get it done now I won’t be rushed or regret doing it later.
That moment just hit me again. I have thought about many different ways I could make money on the side. From blogging to running a hot dog stand to investing in real estate. Yet I always tend to come back to blogging.
I don’t know why exactly, I’m not what you would call a great writer. Yet it always seems to call to me.
At first, I wanted to do it because you see all the other Bloggers out there making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. I mean that still sounds good. But it wasn’t enough to make me keep going. I had to dig deep to find my why. Finding your why isn’t easy. If you know you know.
You would think that “I want to be rich” would be a pretty simple way to get you motivated to take action… Not round here partner. Turns out it requires something a little more meaningful.
I am not exactly certain what my why is but I think it is around the realm of expression, finding your voice, and being who you truly are.
What does that mean? Do you have to have gone through a horrible traumatic experience just to be valid in your opinions? Do you have to have a slum-to-riches back story just to start? I don’t think so, and there are plenty of people out there who had normal not so exciting lives that made a change and it changed everything.
For me, I grew up in a family of 4. The youngest. And long story short being able to express myself didn’t come easy. My family had a knack for knocking down any excitement I had with my life. And so it made it very hard to find an outlet for me to express my thoughts.
So that is what I like about the idea of blogging. It will let me be me. There are quite a few benefits as well.
- Blogging Supposedly inspires creativity. Which seems to be in short supply in this day and age. Being creative helps us feel alive, in control, and masters of our fates. Would you be against being able to create more excitement in your life by finding an outlet to be more creative?
- It helps you clarify your thoughts. Have you ever just wanted someone to be a sounding board? Someone to just sit there and listen while you unloaded so that you could get your thoughts straight and have that weight lifted off your shoulders?
- Eventually, if you stick with it, it has the potential to change your life. There are stories/testimonials all over the internet of how people’s lives have changed. Financially, Socially, Spiritually, etc.. That kind of stuff sounds attractive. Don’t you think?
I am sure there are plenty of other benefits out there, but right now it is 11 PM and the urge to do that research just doesn’t quite make the cut.
Just start…
In a chapter of the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. There is a story that I have heard countless times in so many self-help books.
It goes something like this… ONCE UPON A TIME… just kidding. I will paraphrase.
In multiple disciplines. There have been teachers/professors that performed and repeated an interesting experiment from Pottery to Photography. The experity was in short Quantity Vs. Quality.
Now in hindsight, the saying Quality over Quantity is an expression of ethics (or it at-least touches the realm of ethics) saying that it’s better to focus on quality over quantity.
Anyways the experiment had the teachers select one half of their class to be the quantity group. This group would be graded on the amount of something they produced. Whether that was the amount of photos they took or the amount of clay pots they made. They would be graded on the sheer amount they produced.
The second group would be graded on the quality of only 1 item they produced. No practice, just a one-time shot at doing something perfect.
If you have thought about doing something for a long time and attempted it once, I bet you know exactly how this story ends.
When it came time for the grading of the 2 groups. The quality group failed miserably. While the quantity group had quality that was outstanding. The act of repeating the action with minor adjustments each time as the quantity group was doing, resulted in the quality getting better each time they attempted.
The quality group however had not opportunity to improve off of their one attempt.
This brings us back to that feeling I mentioned earlier. I may not be a great writer, but hey this is the first article. If I just do it, and keep doing it. I am bound to get better. Im no longer focused on the outcome. I just want to have something that I do every day and improve each time.
