Things Learned From the Blog So Hard Challenge

This month Will Washburn and I set out to between the two of us blog every day. So basically it resulted in writing a post every other day or sometimes two in a row if I had to cover for Will. We had both been slacking on our blogging previously to this so we decided to do this to get more active in blogging. Here are a few take aways from this challenge:

** **

• Writing is therapeutic Writing something down makes me collect my thoughts and really reflect on how I feel about whatever I’m writing about. Sure, I might have thoughts that are floating around but the process of writing them forces me to sort them, organize them, and present them in a way that makes sense. After I’m done blogging I feel much better and can let my mind move on to the next topic.
• My editing skills need work As my girlfriend politely points out, “you need to proof read your posts!” The sad part is that I usually do proof read my posts but apparently I wasn’t checking close enough. If I did I probably would read what I wanted it to be or thought it should be and not actually what was really there. This is important to remember especially if I’m writing copy on our company’s website. 
• Sometimes people do actually read what I write Rarely, but judging from some comments, it seems that I received a small amount of traffic to my blog. Nothing to shake a stick at, but it also helped to post it to Twitter, Hacker News, and I’m thinking about posting it to Reddit sometimes too. Obviously the more I blog the more readers I maybe could get, as long as I’m writing good content - which I’ll try to do!
• **Being “real” is **best ** **If after writing a post I feel a little vulnerable, I know I was being real in that post. Not surprisingly those were the posts that received the most responses. Part of blogging is putting a bit of yourself out there. Not only do you have to be confident enough to do that, but secure enough as well. That in itself is a positive take away.

So definitely lots of positive from the #BlogSoHardChallenge and Will and I have agreed individually to blog at least twice a week from here on out. Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed our challenge as much as we did.