When Are Blogging Goals Too Ambitious?

As the COVID Pandemic of 2020 swirled around us, I embarked on a valiant quest to conquer ambitious blogging goals. With gusto, I planned to churn out two vibrant posts daily, five days a week. Alas, the demands of such a prolific output eventually led to an inevitable burnout. What possessed me to believe I could shoulder such a burden?

These ambitious blogging goals emerged from a time of great frustration and withered creativity which coincided with the beginning of the Pandemic. For three long months, I sought refuge in the comforts of binge-watching television and other distractions. Outside of a few piecemeal ghostwriting assignments that barely paid my cell phone bill, my pen remained mostly dormant.

Slowly, my longing for self-expression rekindled, and I yearned to share my thoughts with the world more intensely than ever before. Thus, I returned to the keyboard, eager to find a focus for my musings, all the while paying homage to all-powerful Google and its legion of tireless creepy web crawlers.

These ambitious blogging goals began with the birth of what is now The Phoenix Desertsong, a creative sanctuary inevitably built upon the foundations of hundreds of older posts, waiting to be revitalized and reimagined. Through this adventure, my writing has blossomed, and my perspective has evolved. Wisely, after the first few months, I scaled back my aspirations, choosing to craft a single post for each day of the year, scheduling them ahead of time to avoid undue strain.

Many of these early posts on the first incarnation of The Phoenix Desertsong had to do with my overall writing journey. I wanted to show my beginnings as a writer, so that those reading along could follow the slow, steady progress necessary to become a fair scribe. In my early days of personal blogging, I treated my blogs as intimate thought journals. Meanwhile, as a professional writer, I kept my personal concerns in the shadows, a ghostwriter creating content for others. But by 2021, I emerged from the shadows for good, putting an end to my ghostwriting activities and dedicating myself to weaving words solely for my own pursuits.

In the midst of this journey, my niche began to crystallize around the creation of motivational content. Drawing primarily from my experiences after college, I initially set out to craft two daily posts, keeping them concise at 400-500 words to stave off exhaustion. But topic fatigue still soon crept in, and I found myself delving into my treasure trove of older content, eager to breathe new life into forgotten gems.

As I scaled back my blogging goals to my current rate of one per day of the year, I needed to reflect on why my blogging goals were too ambitious. To be entirely fair with myself, I needed to jumpstart my writing in the worst way. When you’re launching a new blog, even one that has a foundation of hundreds of previous journal entries to draw from, you need to put as much out there at the beginning as possible. But, more importantly, when you start any project, you need to identify your overall theme, which I didn’t have. This is when I decided that while I didn’t need a topic niche necessarily, I did need to clarify my passion, as that’s the fuel for what drives any creative endeavor.

My true passion lies in supporting fellow writers and aspiring creatives, offering you all a beacon of encouragement and inspiration amidst a sea of technical expertise. With a wealth of experience in blogging and navigating social networks, I could certainly impart wisdom in those areas. But since I have set aside social networking wholesale, my heart fully belongs to what I craft for The Phoenix Desertsong. If anything else, I wish to inspire you to do the same; find your greatest passions and share them with the universe.

This humble abode on the internet now serves as a platform for expressing my thoughts on matters near and dear to me. Perhaps they will resonate with you, too. Ultimately, I yearn to share my tales with you and hope that you will find solace in my sometimes meandering reflections.

Indeed, I eagerly invite you, my cherished readers, to engage in conversation with me. After all, isn’t the end goal of writing to spark dialogue? Rest assured, I’m not wanting for content inspiration, as a trove of ideas still awaits me in the depths of my journal archives. However, if you believe there is a topic I should explore, please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts with me! After all, I’ve made my mind up to never stop learning, and neither should you.

~ Amelia Phoenix Desertsong, Revised April 22, 2023