Or, “What I did on My Winter Vacation”
If I say my blogging break is over and is now past tense, is my break broken? Well, ponder that while we have coffee this morning and we “break” our fast.
Yes, my blogging break is over. You saw that I did manage to post for the weekly photo challenge, which has always been my best day of blogging. If I did nothing else on this blog but post for the weekly photo challenge, I could still enjoy a rather successful blog in terms of readership.
But…
…I like to do more than that. I actually like to write. I managed to write some content for the non-fiction book over my break, but leisure reared its lovely head and beckoned me to SUP, windsurf and relax on the beach in Mexico. The photo is of me snorkeling.
If we were having coffee, I would also tell you that I had to prepare quite a bit of curriculum for my new course that starts at the end of January, and I spent about 12 hours of vacation time working on that. As a professor, I like to be prepared. My class teaches leisure education to new recreation majors, and, ironically, I created and typed most of their assignments from my beach chair. Nothing wrong with that.
My break gave me some time to find some much needed inspiration. At this time last year, I was enjoying my first month of retirement (no part-time teaching) and had gleefully committed to blogging every single day. It helped me develop great habits and gave me a framework for using an editorial calendar and remaining consistent with my blogging schedule, now whittled to three days per week.
I also had a chance to read some very inspirational posts. There is nothing like the motivation of a brand new year to dust off the blog and write fresh content. I recently read a post about “Stress Free Blogging” and it mentions taking a break and making good use of time management. Check it out on Mostly Blogging.
If we were having coffee, I would explain what I mean by “stumbled?” If you haven’t yet heard, Stumble Upon is a web site where visitors choose and “like” content that appeals to them. Like any social media site, bloggers’ content may be “stumbled” which helps bring more readers to their blogs. Bloggers cannot stumble their own blog posts. Having a community of bloggers who love to read your content and choose to share on social media will help promote your posts. You have to reciprocate. This is one of the reasons why blogging is fun. Yes, it takes work, but it is worth it.
But I digress, a little…one of my posts was stumbled by a couple of great bloggers which resulted in 56 views. Not a huge number, by any means, but significant to me. I created a Stumble Upon account and loaded the Stumble bar. When I read a blog I like, I add it to my list then select the thumbs-up icon. It takes 6 seconds. I have committed to using this to help promote great blog posts!
Indeed, blogging takes time, energy and commitment. Using social media and other ways to promote our own blogs as well as others can pay off in many ways!
What inspires you to continue your blogging journey?
Thanks to Part-Time Monster for hosting the Weekend Coffee Share feature.
Second Wind Leisure Perspectives 