Writing on the internet. Not something I saw myself doing, not something I particularly aspired to do but here we are. I don’t know why I decided to start blogging, but I think thats why I’m writing this post. There’s something about blogging that I just can’t get enough of. I love the therapeutic nature of putting all my thoughts into words, it somehow frees my mind up of all the cluttered ideas that race through it on a daily basis.
It was September and I was reading a lot about productivity, how to get more and more out of the 24 hours everyone gets in a day. Now, spending my first few hours running, occasionally swimming, but mostly running is nonnegotiable. If that doesn’t happen then the rest of the day is off, I’m off and anyone who is around me will notice I’m off. That happens early and thats my favourite way to start the day. What happens next in my day is a series of events that are spent trying to balance work, creativity, further workouts/exercise and social/entertainment time. At the time, I wanted to start putting more of me out onto the online world as I feel I have so much creative potential and I spend a lot of my time indulgent in creative activity but so much of that never gets heard or seen. One of the hardest parts of being a creator is when you get little to no recognition for what it is you spend your time working on.
I was reading a book by Austin Kleon called “Steal Like An Artist”, its a sort of self-help guide on how to have more ideas and then put those ideas out there. A follow up book called “Show Your Work” diving even deeper into the subject of creative exposure had me motivated to start something that will encourage me to put my work out into the world. As part of the “Steal Like An Artist” handbook, which is a activity book to go alongside the guide under the same name, there was a 30 day challenge. It was this that I used to start this blog, and I blogged every day for 30 days.
Though, this still doesn’t answer why I chose blogging as my platform to start putting myself out into the big wide world of the internet. Well, I’ve thought about this and I think I have an answer. See, for the longest time, I’ve followed various influencers on the internet. If I am using downtime, then its usually spent watching Vloggers on YouTube. It started with the daily travel vloggers like Ben Brown and Louis Cole back in 2013/2014. Since then vlogging has moved and shifted into something a bit different but I still religiously follow Casey Neistat and I like to keep up to date with what Ben Brown and his pals are up to. Part of me, I think, would like to have a go at vlogging and creating content for YouTube. The reason I picked blogging over vlogging? Because it takes way less time to string these sentences together than it does to go out and film, edit and then upload a video.
That right there, at the end of the last paragraph, is why I chose to blog. I was almost being lazy. I knew I could realistically spare 15-20 minutes to write a blog post. Then, unexpectedly, I found out that I really enjoyed it. Now I’ve been blogging for 6 months and in the grand scheme, haven’t really missed many days since that first 30 day challenge!
So there we have it, the answer to why I started blogging. There is definitely part of me that would still like to have a go at vlogging or at least a few vlog style videos on YouTube here and there. Who knows? Would you watch something like that if I was to do it? Let me know…
Today’s athletic update: 3000m in the pool today. On Wednesday I like to swim with my girlfriend in the morning as a cross training exercise. Also, I do genuinely love swimming, especially open water swimming. If I could live somewhere that had good weather, with an accompanying lake in my back garden I would probably swim every single day. No strength training tonight as I put in sessions on both Monday and Tuesday this week so better let those muscles repair a bit!
Carpe Omnia.
BG
benedict. 