Blogging

Blogging Every Day: What’s Easy, What’s Not, What I’ve Learned

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Once upon a time (okay, like a couple of years ago), I did a little experiment: I watched and blogged about a movie every single day. Nearly a year of daily posts. No breaks. No excuses. Just me, my keyboard, and a whole lot of popcorn.

And you know what? It became a habit—like brushing my teeth or checking my email. At first it felt like a chore, but then something clicked, and suddenly not blogging felt weird.

Then life happened. Or more specifically, a nasty accident happened. I shattered my pelvis, and blogging was shoved way down to the bottom of the priority list. Healing took time, and even after I was up and about again, I didn’t touch my blog for months.

But here I am—back on the horse (pun absolutely intended). And since I did it once, I figure I can do it again. I’ve decided to blog every day. A new chapter of the experiment begins.

The Easy Part

The best part about blogging daily is how quickly it rewires your brain. Once you get rolling, ideas are everywhere. A random overheard conversation? Blog post. A guilty-pleasure movie rewatch? Blog post. That weird dream where Nicolas Cage ran a haunted ice cream truck? Definitely a blog post.

Publishing gets easier too. During my movie-a-day challenge, I stopped worrying about whether each post was “worthy.” Some days I wrote deep dives into cinematography. Other days I wrote two snarky paragraphs and called it good. Either way, hitting “publish” became second nature.

The Hard Part

Consistency is still the trickiest beast. When you’re tired, when you’re sore, when the day is full of errands and distractions, carving out time to write feels impossible. Some nights, it’s a scramble to get words down before midnight.

And yes, perfectionists beware: typos sneak through. Sentences wobble. Not everything will shine. Blogging daily forces you to accept imperfection or you’ll drive yourself absolutely bonkers.

What I’ve Learned (Round Two)

  • Habits stick, but they’re also fragile. Blogging daily for nearly a year was proof I could do it. But once I stopped, I stopped hard. Getting back into the groove takes effort.
  • Momentum is magical. Once I started up again, that muscle memory kicked in. Even on low-energy days, my brain now says, “We’ve done this before, we can do it again.”
  • Readers connect with honesty, not polish. My long-winded essays sometimes got polite nods, but the posts where I casually admitted, “I watched this cheesy 80s flick and loved every second”? Those sparked conversations.
  • It feels good to show up. Even if no one else reads it, there’s satisfaction in keeping the promise to myself.

Why I’m Doing It Again

Breaking my blogging streak taught me something unexpected: I missed it. I missed the little ritual of sitting down, spilling my thoughts onto the page, and sending them out into the ether. I missed the rhythm of it.

So yeah, blogging every day isn’t always glamorous. Sometimes it’s exhilarating, sometimes it’s exhausting. But if I survived a year of movies and blogging (and a shattered pelvis), I figure I can survive a daily post or two.

Here’s to new habits, old lessons, and the stubborn joy of showing up.

So, thanks for being here while I stretch my blogging muscles again. If you’ve ever tried a daily project (or want to), I’d love to know what it taught you.


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A Blog Post Every Day???

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Hey Friends!

So here’s the lowdown: If you’ve been keeping up with my antics, you know I’ve set myself up for this kinda insane, kinda brilliant film challenge – to watch a new movie every single day for a year. Yes, every. Single. Day. And because I love you guys and I love sharing my unfiltered thoughts, I’ve been religiously dropping a blog post for each flick I’ve encountered on this cinematic odyssey.

Case in point: I just wrapped up watching “Frida,” and yes, it was a soul-stirring, artistic rollercoaster that had me at the edge of my seat (more on that in a sec). But real talk: keeping up with this self-imposed ritual to jot down my every cinematic adventure? Phew, it’s a marathon.

Every movie has its own universe, its own rhythm, and trying to capture that essence in a blog post, while still keeping the sparkle of my own voice? It’s a lot, friends. It’s like each review is a mini love letter to the art of film, and I want to make sure I’m doing justice to each one. And let’s not forget, I’m aiming for 365 of these bad boys. That’s a whole lot of love letters, peeps.

I gotta admit, I’m on the fence about continuing to write a post for every single film. I mean, I’m all for a good challenge, but this is like signing up for a marathon with sprints in between. It’s wild. Writing 365 movie reviews in a row is a herculean task that even Hercules might think twice about.

But…here’s the thing – “Frida” has kind of reignited that spark in me. It reminded me why I started this whole shebang. It’s about more than just ticking boxes; it’s about immersing myself in stories, in lives lived, in art created. It’s about what makes us feel alive, and if Frida Kahlo taught us anything, it’s that life, with all its chaos and creativity, is worth documenting.

So, will I continue the daily blog post grind? I’m chewing on it. But for now, let’s dive into the kaleidoscopic world of “Frida” and why this movie, above so many others, was a technicolor reminder of why I fell in love with film in the first place.

Stay tuned for my next post – it could be a review, a rant, a rave, or just a random musing. But whatever it is, I promise it’ll be straight from the heart – just like Frida would’ve wanted.

Catch ya on the flip side,

Roger

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

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Should my blog have a niche?

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Many professional bloggers state that your blog should have a niche, that you should only write about one topic, such as writing or photography. I’ve read time and time again about how a blogger who diversifies too much on their blog will end up losing readers. That is to say if someone came to your blog because you write about photography and you start posting about your comic book collection, they will leave.

Perhaps I can see this being the case if you’re trying to build a brand. If you’re trying to develop a coding course business, for example, I can see how writing about scrapbooking might drive away your potential customers.

I’ve maintained several blogs over the years (though this blog has been around the longest), and in the process, I’ve tried to niche down the blog topics. For example, I used to post tons of book reviews on this blog but eventually split them up into a separate blog (Roger’s Reads). I also had a blog where I talked about tech stuff because tech and gadgets are a couple of other interests of mine and there was another blog where I posted only about Apple-related stuff.

Now while I do talk about my books on this blog, I’ve decided that I want to post about other topics here as well. I never intended for this to be solely a “brand” blog but rather a place where I can talk about a wide variety of different things. Given that I have a lot of interests and hobbies, it was inevitable that they’d show up on this blog.

I want this to be a spot where I talk about topics that interest me, which may be of interest to others as well. This includes books I’ve enjoyed, my writing process, being a musician, fun tech gadgets, exciting software, and more. If I maintained a separate blog for all of them, I’d never have the time to keep them all updated.

But if you are here solely for my books, there is a tab on top where you can learn all about my novels. You also use the category list in the right sidebar to view only those posts whose topics are of interest to you, whether that be photography or book reviews.

With all that being said, I’m going to be slowly phasing out my other blogs (which have been kind of neglected anyway), and my writing will cover a larger variety of topics here. Of course, I hope to create posts that people will find interesting. And for those posts that you don’t…well, there’ll be a post on a different topic the next day.

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A Languishing Blog

Back when I was writing up book reviews on this blog, I posted several times a week. But ever since I moved my book reviews over to rogersreads.com, I inadvertently stopped posting over here completely. I guess I didn’t realize how much book reviews made up this blog.

So one of my goals for the new year (always goals, never resolutions), is to post regularly on this blog. Maybe even daily. Now wouldn’t that be something? I remember a couple years back author Austin Kleon stated that as a goal, he was going to publish a blog post every day for an entire year. And he did. As far as I know, he’s still doing it. So I thought, what the hell. I’m going to give it a try too and bring my languishing author blog back to life.

So the goal is to publish one post here every day. It may be a lengthy post, a book-related post, a movie review, a tidbit of interesting news, an inspirational or humorous quote or simply an image but I’m going to post something here every day. Well, that’s the goal anyway. Truth be told, I shouldn’t have too much difficulty accomplishing this given that I’ve maintained a daily journaling habit since 1980.

So this here’s my post for today. See you tomorrow!

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