How Do You Recharge Your Blogging Batteries

I was just looking at my archives and realized that four months have passed in front of my eyes without even knowing it. Wow. Can it be that I’ve been blogging now for FOUR whole months? Where did the time go?

Birth of a Blog

Four months ago today I wrote my very first post on this blog. When I started getting all sentimental I went back to read some of my older stuff again, all I can say is ouch. Don’t look.

Honestly I would be embarrassed to produce those kinds of post today. I despise bland an unimaginative posts that have no imagination. I guess I can always use the excuse that I was new but if I can’t come up with something better than that today, I will just leave it.

I thought today would be a great time to look back and see how far I have come in four short months. I fired up Google to look back and see what my average daily visitors were then versus today. I am proud of what I have accomplished but even more excited about how far I think I can go.

Then and Now

On Dec. 2nd after publishing my first post the day before I had 4 visitors.

Four months later on March 31st I had 567 visitors.

My first full week of blogging I received 99 visitors.

Last week I received about 3500 visitors.

On Dec. 2nd I had a PR0

On March 31st I had a PR2 but predicted to be PR5

On Dec. 2nd I didn’t know what Alexa was.

On March 31st I have an Alexa of 76k and dropping

On Dec. 2nd I had never heard of StumbleUpon

On Dec. 9th I got my first taste and received over 1000 visitors…Yahoo!

On Dec. 2nd I didn’t know what a stylesheet was or the first thing about CSS

On March 31st I am trying to have my own custom theme designed and frequently mod mine

On Dec. 2nd I didn’t know what Technorati was.

On March 31st I have an Authority of 53k and dropping

On Dec. 2nd I didn’t know what Akismet was.

On March 31st I have 2257 Spams caught by Akismet. 141 week or 20 per day on average.

On Dec. 2nd I didn’t have the first idea what I was doing.

On March 31st I am starting to figure it out. I love this stuff.

I did not put any of this together to brag in any way as my stats are not even close to what I consider a “big” blog but I did put it together for a purpose.

Forward Thinking

Often times people can tend to become bogged down in how overwhelming it can be trying to accomplish their goals. You might be pushing and digging so hard to make progress that you kind of lose sight of what progress is. Where you pushing yourself? In a circle or straight ahead?

If this doesn’t happen to you then you are very fortunate but I know it happens to me. I find it helpful to stop digging for a day or two and instead, look in the rear view mirror. If I am frustrated and need a pick me up I only need to look back a few months to see how far I have come.

It recharges me and brings back my enthusiasm. I am a goal oriented person, I need a goal, I need a target and I need to be striving for something. I am not comfortable without it but occasionally need to regroup before charging ahead.

Learning Curve

In some ways I am beginning to feel like a seasoned blogger but in other ways I still feel like a rank amateur. I take particular joy in noting that all of the progress above has come while learning some of the basics of blogging.

When I say I didn’t know what Alexa was I am not exaggerating. I had heard of it before but I didn’t really know what it was. I have had to learn almost everything from scratch which, while difficult, is all that more satisfying to me that I did it on my own.

I know I have a lot to learn from here and that like life, blogging is a journey. I will keep learning but I take comfort in knowing that I have built a pretty solid foundation. I have my core feeling pretty good and I am eager to step it up to another level in the next 4 months.

Conclusion

This post wasn’t about pumping my stats, I do that often enough. It was a chance for me to look backwards in order to be able to keep moving forwards. I enjoyed writing it, I enjoyed reading through some of my first posts and I am going to enjoy writing my next 100 posts.

I left all of my early posts there but I have to say after reading them I am considering rewriting them and freshening them up a bit. They need some juice to match my writing style today. If anyone were to come across them via a Google search it surely wouldn’t inspire them to read any more of my content.

We’ll see what happens, maybe I can pull an Oliver North and shred them and claim to have no recollection.

The bigger question is am I alone in looking in the rear view? Does anyone else find motivation by looking back to see how far you have come? If not what do you do to recharge?