This week’s theme for Blaugust is staying motivated. It just so happens to also be the week where I have found the least motivation. Not to the fault of anyone but my own. Posting every day is a great goal and I’ve done a pretty good job so far this month if I do say so myself. But Posting every day also takes time away from other activities. I was starting to feel like I had been posting more but gaming less and I needed a small break. So I chose to game rather than write the last few days for a bit of a reset.

This isn’t an uncommon occurrence for my Blaugust participation. The difference over the years is if I catch it in time before I lapse into not writing at all. I was feeling on the verge of one of those lapses today so I decided to sit down tonight and write something.

I think part of staying motivated is recognizing when your motivation is running dry and making a decision to do something about it. Seeing as it’s Staying Motivated week and I need some motivation of my own I’ll tell you what motivates me (which will in turn motivate me).

Let’s start with my biggest motivator: reading other blogs. It’s what got me in to this whole blogging thing in the first place. I find that, if I read enough posts, eventually I’ll get the urge to write something as well no matter how long I’ve been away from it or how little motivation I have to write. The inverse, is also true, the longer I go without reading other posts the more likely it is that I won’t write. Sometimes I find inspiration from others’ posts to riff off of but other times just the act of reading what other people are up to makes me want to knock a post or two out.

Participating in community events/ projects are another one of my big motivators. Just this month I participated in Unwise Owl’s call for Humble Choice Reviews which I hope continues! Blaugust is sure to get me to write every year to varying degrees. Some years I make the 31 posts, some years I’m done after two weeks, and some years I make a short introduction post and don’t write anything else, but I’ll always attempt to participate. Then there’s the Blogger Succession XCOM Game that’s been going on now for over a year and a half. Last year was one of my biggest blogging slumps but every time my turn came back around I knew I had to write at least one post. Nothing motivates quite like a bunch of people waiting on you to play your turn…

My last motivator is simply writing something, anything really. Preferably something that ends with a published post. Kind of like what I’m writing now. There seems to be about a three day shelf life on my own motivation. Any longer than that, and the chances of me writing decrease significantly. It really is a wonder this blog has been going for so long…