Passing the Blaugust halfway mark 🏆✍️

22 Aug, 2025

Today marks day 16 of consecutive writing for Blaugust. Halfway for me. I know, we're already August 22nd, but I joined a bit late.

As I passed the halfway mark, I thought it would be good to reflect on this challenge and my experiences so far.

I joined the challenge as I wanted to focus on this blog again. I do enjoy writing and get a great feeling when hitting the publish button, yet I have not done it enough in the past weeks.

Dailyish writing

Blaugust was a great challenge for me, as it forced me to write and to show up. I've almost never written consecutive days, so I knew this would be challenging. I have the tendency to procrastinate, so the challenge to show up dailyish forced me to take action and write.
Like running regularly, but only doing it seriously after subscribing to an event.
I need pressure, and Blaugust gave me the right incentive.

I did mention I would write dailyish, yet have not missed a day.
I think this is for 2 things. I'm often streak-driven, so once I start doing it, I want to keep that streak alive. The longer I can maintain it, to more it becomes a natural habit.
The second is that if I skip a day, I might skip the rest as well. I've seen it before: the moment I give myself some breathing space, the phrase "I'll do it tomorrow" becomes easier to act on.

I know this may not be for everyone. Once I joined, Ruben (Kedira) reached out to me, telling me he liked the concept, but was held back because of it being output focused. He does write, but not to the extent of being able to publish daily. And it's true.
But I think it all comes down to defining your own path of how you want to publish and how frequently (see this nice piece of Jedda). No one is going to keep you accountable, except perhaps your own inner critic.

Silencing the inner critic

Speaking of the inner critic, too often it had the upper hand when I was thinking of writing something. Now, with the challenge of writing daily, I was able to silence it.
Instead of thinking Should I write this? I wrote down each idea and started writing on one when I had the time.

This push to write helped me to silence the inner critic. Not only here, but in general. It helped me stop thinking about what other people think, and just do my own thing.

Stopping perfectionism

With every piece I published, I was trying for it to be perfect. Triple-checking my spelling, changing paragraphs, use of colours, icons, a fitting reference image (for sharing online),... I spent a lot of time doing these tweaks. And while it may look nicer, it doesn't make a big difference to what I'm writing.

As my focus was to publish daily, I stopped doing all of that.
I created a few snippets for meta information & tags, but everything else was just a copy/paste from my draft into Bear. And I liked it.

Writing whenever I can

As I was off with the family for most of last week, I had to make use of the available time. Considering a full day of activities and an evening run, it meant I didn't have many opportunities. Yet, with the help of iA Writer on my phone, I took every time as a moment to write. And it worked.

I'm someone who spends a lot of time behind a computer screen, which has made me too accustomed to only writing this way. A phone works just as well, and with iA Writer, I even immediately had the correct markdown to paste here.

Lots of ideas came to mind

Being in this challenge forced me to see and observe. While I previously had issues thinking about what to write, ideas came to mind easily. I still have some ideas in draft, and interactions spark new ones.

I need to see if I feel the same at the end of the challenge, but for now, I have a lot of things to write about.

Connecting with others

Publishing more brings more visibility (I see that from my data).
But it also creates more connections. People have reached out to me after reading something. Or they wrote a reply. I'm grateful for all of these interactions.

Additionally, being in this challenge made me interested in the writing of others, reading more posts and connecting with them.

Skipping other things

To keep up and publish daily, I had to use the available time, which meant I had to prioritise.

On the good side, it made me focused and stopped me from doing unnecessary things. First, I had to write, and only afterwards I could have other screen- or game-time.

While it was good to cut back on some bad habits, it also impacted the good ones.
Last week, I often went to bed a bit later than usual to finish something, or didn't have time a read all the articles I wanted to.

I know, it's all what you find important. But still, I had to make choices. Maybe this improves when I'm quicker at writing, but for now, I need my time to do it.

Conclusion

This is the first time I did such a challenge, and so far, I mostly felt the positive impact it has had on me. I hope I can keep up until the end of the challenge and feel the same afterwards.

But for now, I'm committed to keep writing.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

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#2025 #2025-08 #article #blaugust2025 #blogging