I’ve blogged here on my website irregularly, if not half-heartedly, for 10 years. Beginning in 2014, I blogged faithfully every month at my publisher’s blog (Prairie Rose Publications). I also blogged monthly for a several years at Western Fictioneers.
Then last May, and not entirely out of the blue, I ran out of blogging steam. I’d felt it coming. Blogging was becoming a chore and something I dreaded more and more. I could have roasted marshmallows over the flames of my blogging burnout. I gave myself permission to take a blogging break for the summer. Then September arrived and October and November and December, and I still wasn’t blogging.
I was discouraged and disappointed in myself, but I was also mentally and emotionally empty in the blogging department. My Give-a-Darn-if-I-ever-Blogged-Again well had gone bone dry. The longer I went without blogging, the more rationalizing I did about why it was the right decision to stop blogging.
I was lying to myself. It wasn’t the right decision, but my want-to wasn’t strong enough to muscle past the easy excuses.
Then in December, WordPress announced ‘Bloganuary’. I eyed that email like a mouse looks at a baited trap—with suspicion knowing full well it might turn out to be a ‘careful what you wish for’ scenario. I went through all the reasons I couldn’t/shouldn’t sign up for Bloganuary, and that was the end of that.
Then another and still another Bloganuary email arrived. My want-to gained interest. In a moment of I’M GOING TO DO THIS (undoubtedly fueled by a couple of glasses of holiday-cheer wine that particular evening) and, before I had a chance to overthink and talk myself out of undertaking this 31-day commitment, I signed up.
This, my reader-friends, is the last thing I did that was out of my comfort zone.
How about you? Have you left your comfort zone lately?
Until next time,
Kaye Spencer
writing through history one romance upon a time
Image: canstock