Greetings and Salutations, blog readers.

You precious blog readers who give me validation in the form of reading, liking, and telling me to keep going. 200 blogs ago I set out to write Daily Blogs, inspired by daily vlog style content that I enjoyed a bunch. I still have views for how those blogs could, and maybe should, look, but the idea, over 200 blogs, has changed, grown, as I have.

Now I try to have the blogs be not only daily vlog style blogs, but also have fun blog lessons to them, or neat “moral of the story.” I also tend to do reviews, either my skin care product reviews or my zombie reviews, and in general I discuss anything I find interesting. The Daily Blog is now not just relegated to being merely my daily day to day activities, which can get monotonous, but to anything I find fun. Daily Blog now just means that…A blog that comes out at least once a day.

And, it turns out…people kind of like it. Posting every day has done well for my readership, and I gain followers and readers, and I have even developed relationships with some of my readers on social media. It is really cool to actually develop not just an audience, but a community. Nothing big, nothing huge, but a few people who appreciate the craft of writing, who understand the urge and need to create, no matter what their given art is, and who are okay with a weirdo who consumes a lot of zombie content. Maybe even some people who believe, as I do, that cannabis also belongs in our content, if we are to make it believable as the world changes.

I have been able to find a small audience, and I add more people to that audience every day.

I am gaining more confidence not just in my abilities as a writer, but as a blogger, able to look at every day and find something worth writing about, some lesson worth learning, and some fun thing to post.

I have gotten better at documenting my days, not just by writing about them but by taking photographs to illustrate the blogs. I have gained confidence in my editing skills, as well, and now I know I have enough skills to be able to slowly edit my own stuff to a decent degree. The blog turn around can also mean having to condense the editing phase. Where I may normally like to write, wait a day, edit, wait a day, edit again, wait, final read and post, when I want to do blog for the next day, I have to condense this writing/editing period, and instead of having days, I have hours.

This shortened process would normally cause more errors, but I have been teaching myself better editing techniques and skills, by constantly using these skills, I have been growing the muscles and getting better at being efficient with my editing time.

I have been getting better with all time, really. This blog has been fantastic for teaching me not only the value of my time, but how to best manage that time I now can more fully appreciate and value.

I have to look at every hour as time I could be editing or blogging, writing my work in progress, illustrating…. On average it will take me a couple hours, per blog, sometimes spread out over the course of a few days, some times just the one day. This time management becomes key, when you only have so many hours in a day, or want to write several blogs, while also reserving time for your primary writing projects.

So, take me for instance. I like to write or edit Flake City every day, but it ends up not being that often, and as I have been procrastinating on finishing up this finale of the first section/volume of Flake City. When I am not procrastinating, I like to write three thousand words on whatever creative writing project I am working on. I also write at least one blog a day, but I try to write extra’s for days when I can’t get a blog written, or when I want to have two on a given day. I tend to like to do two blogs on Friday, so, these extra blogs help with these goals as well.

This all requires training your brain to be able to summon creative energy and write, no matter how long or hard the day has been…but also requires knowing when you just don’t have the energy, and you need to post one of those blogs from drafts.

I have learned there is nothing better than having ten or more blogs in draft mode, all ready to go.

Except, of course, having the next weeks worth of blogs scheduled, as in, will go up without any effort from you, without anyone pressing a single button, the next weeks worth of blogs, 7-8 minimum, will post…and also having ten or more drafts ready to go.

When you have this kind of peace, you can write in a creative care free place. My goal for this week is to actually get my drafts back up to a decent number, and to also get a weeks worth or more scheduled…but with some wiggle room for the vlog style daily blogs, the day to day life blogs, because when living in the middle of a pandemic, things can change that you may want to write about.

And thankfully I now have all this time.

I had so many goals for Daily Blog #200. I wanted to have audio files, me reading my blog posts and maybe a bit more, and while I am working on something like that, with audio files for the blog posts for accessibility reasons, and I still have plans for a radio show type podcast sort of program.

I am working on getting a VERY simple type of vlog channel up, but in order to be authentic to who I am, and not get lost in the masses of nonsense, I think I may be making that content mostly for WeedTube, instead. Nothing against YouTube, but I don’t want to constantly worry about editing all my cannabis use out, or about labeling my stuff in any special way.

I am not a corporate type of person and YouTube is fast becoming “the industry standard” and I don’t know if that means it is right for me. WeedTube is smaller, and I think it may fit me better. I am never going to have a beautifully smooth video with amazing bright lighting, natural windows, a beautiful space to film in, high quality cameras, and crazy top notch video editing software with the skills to back it up.

Sure, I could save and work hard to learn the skills…I appreciate those who do…and maybe I could even hire someone, down the road, to do it…but me, where I am right now, will not see that sort of situation, where I can have a beautiful spot, bright lights, good camera, editing software, skills, within the next year or so.

So, WeedTube seems more my speed, more my level. I have some videos I need to edit together and load, and I should probably be working on that…just because it is kind of fun to do, and, technically, can bring in more income…if you are just stuck at home anyways, and you enjoy the thing, and you can learn more skills, all with the chance of finding more of your audience, and or making money, passive or otherwise…thats just a ton of good reason to try and do something new.

More so with so many people stuck inside anyways. So, even though this is meant to be blog all about me saying “holy fuck 200 Daily blogs!” I have yet another fun little blog lesson- other than use this time to create, to stretch your muscles, push your limits, do things you have always wanted to do but never had the time to do.

The lesson is: just because you had one goal in mind doesn’t mean that over the course of time those goals can’t change. Your content can change, what makes you happy can change. The world…can change, something we are all learning every day, I think.

So, here we are: 200 Daily Blogs. In total, this blog is number 255. 255 total blogs.

I used to wonder when to post, or how often. Now I just post at 7:00 AM Central, every day, and 7:00 PM Central if I am doing two posts that day, and I post every single day. It solves the problem of “which days” rather nicely.

Instead of worrying about “running out of things to write about” I just keep writing, and realize that this is a great big world and it isn’t that hard to keep finding ideas.

Your writing muscles can get tired from lots of use, but every day use is how you build up stamina. Your writing muscles can get tired, but I firmly believe as long as you keep your writing muscles engaged, a little every day, you will never run out of things to write about…and if you do start to run dry, you can revisit old topics…because you are writing every day, your skills grow, and you can have whole new takes on the same blog topics, with the added benefit of the knowledge and skill from writing every day, you can elevate topics and also speak to growth. Hello second idea…and from there the creative well is running deep, pouring out ideas for new posts, or updated takes. You can write down all the possible ideas, and before you know it you have twenty drafts ready to go.

255 blogs has taught me many things. One of the most important being that I am so glad I started this, and hope I never stop.

I have grown, and I know I will continue to do so. I have gotten so many opportunities to really become better at my craft, and also just with who I am as a person…and I am so glad I will keep doing this.

Things are scary right now, with the Coronavirus, but I have this blog. This blog has given me the confidence to just write, edit, and be okay with self publishing my works, even if that means I have to do more work, and get less work. Work twice as hard to be half as liked, as it were, but, yeah, I am okay with it. Because this blog has shown me all the ways you can be happy earning each single read, each follower…it’s harder, but far more rewarding.

And it’s all yours.

So, thank you, blog readers, for being here with me. I can’t wait to have more people like us join this little group, because we are some cool fucking people. Thanks for being here, and, of course, as always…

Thanks for reading.

❤️

Abbi