When I intentionally decided to do daily posting on this blog, I wasn’t sure how long I thought I would keep it going. I didn’t think it’d be five years!
On Friday, what I’d call a significant anniversary on this blog went quietly by.
It was January 5, 2013, that I wrote the first post in what has become a string of daily posting here at Patrick’s Place.
On that date, I hadn’t necessarily made the decision that it would be first official day of it. I was leaning towards it, of course, but I wasn’t certain I wouldn’t miss a day and start the daily posting plan a bit later than that.
Somehow, I managed to keep it going.
In doing so, I learned (or perhaps relearned) a lesson that applies to many things besides blogging:
You accomplish a goal one step at a time.
There would have been no way I could have plotted out every topic I’d write about on a daily basis in advance. Oh, sure, I could, at any given point, brainstorm a week’s worth of posts. Perhaps even a couple of weeks’ worth of posts if I really thought about it.
But not a whole year, much less five of them.
I wrote that first post in the 5-year stretch.
The next day, I wrote the second.
On the third day, I wrote the third.
Eventually, and at varying points along the way, I’d write a few posts ahead. Sometimes, I’d even try writing a post in advance well ahead of its posting date, so I’d be sure not to forget an important date. The first draft of this post, for example, was started in August of last year. (When I began writing it, I obviously assumed I’d make it to this point. Here’s to wishful thinking!)
But five years’ worth of posts, one per day, amounts to roughly 1,826 individual posts. How many posts could you write in a single day? Even if you wrote three or four per day, it would still take a long, long time to complete that assignment. And once you did, you’d still, presumably, have to keep writing to keep the stretch going.
This fifth anniversary of daily posting here at Patrick’s Place serves as a good reminder for me, and I hope it likewise serves as a good one for you: a major accomplishment isn’t something that happens overnight. It’s something that involves planning (to some degree or another), dedication and a lot of work. If you’ve read this blog for a while, you surely know that I have managed to take a few days off at a stretch here and there. So, no, I haven’t necessarily written every single day of five years; but I did write often enough and consistently enough that I was able to maintain a stream of daily content that has lasted five years and, as of today, a few days past that mark.
If I’m honest, I couldn’t possibly have done it any other way.
Next month, this blog will celebrate its 14th anniversary!
Whether it’s five years of daily posts or 14 years of blogging whenever, it was all done one step at a time.
So many things in life work that way.
Thanks for reading and thanks for sticking with me for so long.
