Lessons Learned After 8 Years Of Blog Writing

I’m still here 🙂 . I’ve now been writing on this blog for 8 years and it continues to be the longest running hobby I’ve ever had. So with the anniversary of penning my first words for this blog, I like to reflect on the past year and if I’ve learned anything new about writing. So let’s get into what I learned in the last 12 months!

A More Challenging Balance

I’m now in my 3rd year of early retirement and this was the first time that I found writing for the blog consistently challenging. A little bit of a challenge is a great thing, but I kept finding myself with less time to devote to writing.

I think this is because I’m finally pursuing all my nomadic dreams, which included expanding my travels to international locations in 2022 as well as learning a new language from scratch. Between that, reading 100 books last year, watching hundreds of movies with friends and generally living my life, there was less down time that I would usually devote to writing.

Wordiness

Another reason writing has been more challenging this last year is because I write WAY more. The word count on my posts just keeps increasing in retirement. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

Not only do I have less quiet time for writing, I am also writing more so the overall amount of time I require to write what I want has increased. What a dilemma 🙂 .

Overdrive

All of this came to head in November when I lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina and wanted to explore. However, I also had the ridiculous idea of doing NaNoWriMo (writing 50,000 words in November) for the 3rd year in a row in order to prepare for my 3rd annual PurpleMas where I post twice a week during the month of December. In essence, I did this to myself 🙂 .

FUCK YEAH✍️🏾💜🙌🏾!!! pic.twitter.com/3xoPgW3exM

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) November 30, 2022

And after all that writing, I found myself staring at a blank page in January and feeling nervous about being able to meet my (self-imposed) posting schedule but luckily, my inspiration came back and I felt the urge to write again after a break. But the days before that inspiration hit were nerve-wracking. I did wonder “Is this it? Is this the moment when I become a less frequent poster like so many other early retirees?” But nope! Not yet at least 🙂 .

My Writing Plan Going Forward

So what am I going to do about all of this? I’ve decided to do a few things to be able to continue writing since it brings me joy while also exploring the world. I’m going to do what I do with every other activity in my life: Schedule it 🙂 .

I’m going to put writing time on my calendar and sit down to do it. My SIL recently reminded me that writing is not just something you do when inspiration hits, but it’s also a discipline that you need to work on.

So I’m going to use more of that lens going forward while still doing my best to not force anything and write when I get the urge to do so. I might just need to drop everything if that urge hits in the middle of doing something else, but that’s ok 🙂 .

The other thing I’m considering is not doing NaNoWriMo or PurpleMas in 2023. I learned a lot doing it this year, but I think doing that on top of my regular posting schedule and travel plans for 2023 might be too much. Feel free to check back in November to see if I’m a dirty liar though 🙂 .

Finding Support

Something else that I started in 2022 and will continue into 2023 is joining a Writing Club. I mentioned this in a few of my Monthly Recaps, but last year I worked on editing a novel that a finance friend was submitting for publishing. After that, my SIL invited me into a group with a few people who are working on their own writing.

They’re working on fiction books while I obviously write non-fiction here, but meeting with them usually provides inspiration and support that I haven’t had with my writing before, which is really awesome 🙂 .

Community Is The Best

This is really what keeps me going if I’m ever in doubt if my next blog topic will be welcomed or appreciated. Y’all are AMAZING! This community is the reason I keep writing and obviously the reason I took this blog public in mid-2018. It was cool to record my journey to retirement for myself, but opening the floodgates to y’all was the best decision I made 🙂 .

To that end, I have been a lot more intentional this last year about (1) always making sure I respond to comments because they make my day and (2) scheduling hangouts in real life when you reach out to me about that. As a result, I’ve met some of you wonderful people in person and it’s been one of the highlights of my travels 🙂 . I’m excited to continue both of those in 2023.

Recently someone on Twitter asked me how I find friends without work (and implied that all of their friends come from work). I had to think about it because I very rarely made friends at work since I unfortunately learned early on that they’re not really your friends – they’re colleagues and backstabbing at least in my industry is rampant 🙂 .

Even before I quit, the main source of my new friends was actually this community – and that continues to be the case. It’s so great that people all over the world read this blog so there are people who want to hang out in every city I go to – I’ve never been in such high demand 😉 . But seriously, this community, reading y’alls comments every Tuesday, and meeting you for coffee has been one of the highlights of the last almost decade of my life.

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Curating The World

As I mentioned, I started this blog to curate my journey to retirement, but now that I actually am retired, that curation has taken a new shape. In addition to showing where I spent my time and money in a given year, it also catalogs what cities all over the world are like, what it’s like to fly far away airlines, and even what the latest awesome underrated film might be.

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I’ve been able to record what I was learning, thinking and feeling every month of my retirement along with what I was thinking during wild times, such as the beginning of the pandemic or the recent stock market downturns. Having the accountability of this blog and my weekly schedule have ensured that my life has been captured – accurately – in my words and I already find a lot of joy in looking back and seeing how far I’ve come.

Travel Tips

In the last year I also intentionally tried to branch out in what I was capturing on this blog. I now routinely write reviews of flights and other travel experiences. I share things that I find helpful or that I wish I had known that would have helped someone avoid my mistakes 🙂 .

I also find it really helpful to get recommendations from others for what to do and eat in new locations, so I’ve been liberal with providing my own restaurant and activity recommendations while traveling. I joked this year that this might be turning into a travel blog and I’m cool with that 🙂 .

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Rhythm Is Good

Someone (affectionately) made fun of my self-imposed deadlines when I joked that I have “too much to do” 🙂 . However, having the small constant that I ALWAYS publish a new blog post on Tuesdays has really helped me keep momentum. There isn’t time to second guess what I’m doing because the deadline is looming. I have no time to overthink and I believe that helps me keep going. Growing up, I always wanted to review places, restaurants and films, but I never did – even on the rare occasion when I had the time. I think that’s because I didn’t have a deadline, external pressure (the good kind 😉 ) and a rhythm.

The Next Year

In 2023, I’m going to schedule time to write and not take on additional challenges that will take my time away from exploring the new locations I’m traveling to this year. I’m going to keep just focusing on the parts of blogging I enjoy, and ignoring the rest. I continue to turn down way more opportunities than I accept, and I want to fiercely guard my time and brain space.

For example, I was asked in November to write a post for money and I said no with NaNoWriMo and PurpleMas going on. Now that all of that is over, I’ve reassessed if that’s something I want to do this year, but it’s great that even money can’t tempt me to deviate from my very important nap schedule 🙂 .

Conclusion

So that’s where my mind is after 8 years of writing on this blog! Finding time to write while traveling the world has become more challenging, but I get so much joy out of writing on here that I’m going to fit it into my ‘busy’ schedule 😉 . So see you next time and thank you for being here!

What’s your favorite hobby lately?