Well, after 6 months after starting this blog, it seems like I've lost interest. I just looked at my last post and it was several weeks ago. My goal of doing 4 posts a month (i.e. one a week) has not been met. I find it a chore or extra work to start typing on this blog. I don't "make time" for this blog, it just doesn't seem like I'm very interested anymore. So, what happened. I remember when I first created this thing in December of last year. It was part of my New Year's resolution and I was stoked about it. I wanted to tell the world my story and help others achieve what I have and bring people on the journey with me so that they can see for themselves that anyone can do it.
After thinking about it for a little bit, I figured out what the problem was. I really lost my way. I forgot what my original purpose of this blog was. It was supposed to be an outlet for me to share my thoughts, struggles, accomplishments, etc....with no holds barred. I was going to really tell the details of my journey and what it meant to me, my family, my friends, my acquaintances, etc... It was supposed to be my life on a blog and through my life experiences, hopefully people could learn or be inspired or at least walk away with a smile/laugh after reading what I wrote. And I was gung ho about it. I wrote diligently everyday.....for a month. Then things changed....and now I know what went wrong.
Back in January, I started to get all this feedback from different people. There were people who I knew would read it (since I practically forced my family to read it by continuously telling them to....:) But then there were other people who read it and gave encouraging feedback. Since I posted it on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to expand my audience, I was getting people who I haven't heard from in years or old colleagues who could ping me or e-mail me and let me know what they thought of my posts and how it either inspired them to go on a journey or just made them feel happy for me that I've begun mine and accomplished quite a bit. I had people tell me that they would wait up at night till the next post came as it was a part of their daily routine. I had people tell me that they were debt free and loving it and were glad that I decided to go down that path....they gave me encouragement and re-assurance that the path is the right one for me and my family. The blog even became the topic of discussion at family parties, and (coolest of all) it was awesome when I would meet someone or see someone that I haven't seen in awhile and the first thing they would say to me was....I read your blog and it's good stuff....keep it coming.
After all those experiences, why is this the first blog post in weeks and how come I haven't been writing consistently? At first, I blamed it on time. I blamed my day job or my desire to spend all the rest of the hours with my family. Then I blamed it on the topic....I said to myself that I've basically figured out how to be debt free, I don't think I have much more to say on the topic....maybe I should write about different things, like building wealth or how to start a business or anything else. But now I know the root cause and it has to do with passion. I lost it...for this blog. Because this blog's purpose had changed without me fully realizing it. As I mentioned, this blog was originally supposed to convey my message and my life experiences, specifically around my debt journey. Well, along the way, this blog morphed into a "how to" on becoming debt free. It became a place where people read various ways to change their mindset on money and perform steps that could get them out of debt and into financial freedom. In a nutshell, this blog wasn't driven by my passion to tell my story anymore. Instead, this blog turned into a place where I "taught" people "how to" be debt free and "how to" become financially free and "how to" be smarter with their money. Well, it turns out I don't have passion around being a personal finance guru. I don't have passion around being an amazing writer (in fact, I really don't like writing at all). And I definitely don't have passion around teaching structured subjects (i.e. the "how to's" of personal finance).
And what I've found is that without passion, the "thing" (whatever the thing is)....dies! It gets put on the back burner, it never gets prioritized, you'll forget about it, it'll become a weight on your shoulders. That's what this blog became to me. I started over-thinking the posts I should write because they had to be perfect for people to want to read them and follow me. There are several posts in "draft" that I just didn't think were good enough to be posted. And because I over-thought the posts, they took longer to write. I was scrutinizing them for grammatical errors, formal writing rules (like did the post come full circle or was the message clearly articulated, stuff like that) and I even wanted to make sure that I wasn't repeating topics and shared new lessons each time. The other thing that killed me is that I started reading other blogs and I wanted to be different than them and didn't want to repeat their messages. I also wanted to become a better "blogger" so I started to incorporate hyperlinks and boldings/underlines to my posts....as opposed to just writing away. In essence, it became a full-time thought process to get a post done and I didn't have the desire to spend that much time on something I specifically didn't have massive passion around.
Whew, I'm glad I got that out. So, now I can move on. I remember what my original intention was for this blog and I intend to go back to it. I think there's a lot of value in getting my message out and I feel/know that it can help others. So, I'll tell my stories and hope people will get something out of them.
