Another Blaugust is almost in the books. This week’s theme is lessons learned and the day before the event ends is as good a time as any to reflect on this. As others have mentioned this week, collectively we seem to learn the same lessons every year and then forget them until we learn them again next August. This isn’t a bad thing. I 100% fall in to the same pattern every August.

Before I sat down to write, I went back and read some of my earlier lessons learned Blaugust posts. Three things that I always come away with from this event are:

1. I have time to blog as long as I make time to do it.
2. I enjoy the blogging process
3. Posting every day is not for me

This year I did in fact learn some new things:

1. Scheduling posts ahead of time makes posting every day much easier
2. I can write more than one post a day as long as I have time
3. Sometimes I have to choose between blogging and doing something else.
4. It’s ok to take a break.

You would think in my 6 years of blogging I would have figured these things out by now….but sometimes the simplest things take the longest to sink in.

My start to Blaugust 2022 was strong. I was four or five posts ahead for the first week. By the end of the second week some days I was scrambling to get posts out. And by the third week scrambling was not so fun anymore. For next year, if I want to hit those 31 days or any kind of consistent posting schedule having that buffer is hugely beneficial.

The second lesson seems kind of silly in retrospect but it’s important for the first lesson. I’ve found myself a couple times this month really in the zone and diving in to another post after I finished my post for the day. Usually I would save the idea for the next day but there’s no reason I can’t write multiple posts in the same day and schedule them out.

I have less free time now than I did a year ago and I have to choose how to spend it. You would think blogging might fall by the wayside but it’s been important for me to keep it going. This month, I found myself playing less in order to write more. This only works for so long when your blogging about games though. Sometimes I just have to skip a post to play some games.

Which leads me to my last lesson.

This one is the most important lesson I learned this year. 31 posts over 31 days is an aspiration and a challenge but not necessarily the goal for me. I’m going to end this event with 25 posts this month. Considering that’s almost half of the posts I’ve published this year that’s quite an achievement. I could have probably gotten those extra 6 posts out but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it. Allowing myself to take a few days off this month really helped me maintain my motivation to finish out the event!