I'm no good at this. I used to be good at this stuff, but I've lost my touch. This is because I kept the streak alive for two days. Two. Whole. Days, and already it's dead. The daily word quota is dead too, as I only wrote 1,667 (qualified) words for one of the two days. It's all dead and I need to start all over again. What happened to me?
I've Done This Before
The breaking of the blogging streak? Yeah, I've done that before with the blogging case study and with the coffee blog and with numerous other ventures. We don't need to detail how I've lost interest in things, or ran out of money to do things, or had something happened that broke the flow of the streak.
By doing this before, I meant that I've previously started streaks that I've kept alive. One of them is Amnesty International. I've been with Amnesty International for almost 10 years now, starting with my freshman year in college (which was way back in 2006) and finishing with the present day. We have a meeting this coming Wednesday, and I will attend. In this time span, I've only missed a handful of meetings because I was sick or I had work to do. When I miss because I had work to do, I always felt like I made a bad decision and that I really didn't have anything better to do than to go to Amnesty. So, unless I'm sick, I go to Amnesty. I don't regret it, even if I have plenty of other work to do. The point is that Amnesty International is a streak that's still alive. It's something that I've started and kept doing. I didn't lose interest, or forget, or run out of time, or have other things get in the way.
Another example is Forward Saint Louis, which is an aggregator of left-of-center news & analysis. It started as a website and is now just a Facebook page. The site was started when the Tea Party was at its peak, and was started as a way to channel the voices, news, and opinions that ran counter to the Tea Party. Although, Forward STL wasn't intended to be a Coffee Party or anything like that.
Anyway, I came on in the summer or fall of 2012 to help aggregate news for them. By then, Forward STL has switched to the Facebook page. There was a group of us aggregating news, and by around September 2013, I was the only one still maintaining my weekly commitment to aggregate news. Everyone else had lost interest, or forgot, or ran out of time, or had other things get in the way. It's been about 18 months since I started, and I'm the only one still going. I can tell because all the posts from the past several months, with exception of one or two, are mine. I'm currently wondering if there's a way to turn Forward STL into something bigger or something more, especially since I'm the last one left. Aggregating news on a Facebook page is great, but it doesn't seem that awesome when that's all the brand does.
So, I CAN Keep Streak Alive
It's taken a while for me, but I don't think the problem is discipline. I've been very disciplined in other pursuits. Besides the two activism, political ventures I mentioned, I did a very good job with my business blog when that was still going. Over the course of 18 months (is that my streak average), I wrote over 200 blog posts about business blogging, content marketing, social media marketing, inbound marketing, and other similar topics. Those posts were excellent at bringing in traffic to the website, although I had a tough time converting that traffic into leads.
Many of my clients have been long-term clients, meaning they've been with me for years. The average for them is two years, and for most of them I did blogging work. Granted, I get paid to do the work for them, which adds incentive to get the work done. But, it also means that I was doing a good enough job to keep going. If they didn't like my work, then they would have gotten rid of me a long time ago. The fact that I stayed for so long isn't just a testament to me sticking with something. It's also a testament of my talents as a writer.
I Am a Great Writer!
I am awesome! Perhaps I can start again?