Creating content, or creating something of value, is addictive.
I started writing 6 months ago on a personal WordPress blog, the free version as I wasn’t sure if I was going to commit to blogging long term. My first post was about really cheap activities for young toddlers for their fine motor skill development, a guide for young parents to encourage early childhood development for their kids in everyday activities, with no cost needed. It was short, the photos embedded in it were too large, it was riddled with grammatical errors and wrong spelling. It had 15 views in total. It was my first, and it was enough to fire me up, and way away we go.
As a short recap, I wrote more and more, and decided to buy my own domain name for my blog. We self-hosted my blog on my husband’s home computer, which as you can imagine, has to be on 24/7 other than the routine restart for maintenance sake. I started to learn about google analytics, how to edit images on free apps, and even applied for Google Adsense and was rejected, twice. I learned along the way, how to write better.
Then I found Medium, and started writing there too, for the exposure and wider audience, and the possibility to earn some money along with my love for writing and reading. I learned about Grammarly and now use it to edit out grammatical errors, and Unsplash for the free images, which in previous posts I only relied on personal photos taken by me. These helped a lot. I started to earn some amount of money, although small, from Medium for my writing. The day I saw the small sum of payment from Medium deposited to my bank account was surreal, I never thought I would be paid for writing online.
Then it became harder to cope, with work, motherhood and keeping up with writing. My blog’s domain name was Beccawritesatnight.com for a reason, as I already was strapped for time to commit to writing when this started.
Literally, I only had time to write at night after the children are in bed. I had ideas, every day, on what new topics to write about, usually at night after the hectic workday comes to an end. By then, I had an hour, maybe, to put something down on digital paper to present and narrate out the words in my head, going about in circles and ever-changing its form. If not written down fast enough, it’s forgotten, so to catch it I have to jot it down quickly on my phone’s Google Keep app, just to remind myself.
I realized I am hooked, hooked to create new content frequently, and in my case, it’s in written form. Value, be it from an invention, a Youtube video, or a written article, a podcast, a book, can be addictive to anyone. A creative outlet, a craft.
I have so many topics, but not enough time.
And I have to be happy with that. As much as I want to put myself in a room and write for a full day and create more content, I am not able to. Life is full and busy, and I have to intentionally carve out chunks of my time to write.
In other words, as far as the amount of content creation and writing goes, it is sufficient for now. All the best to you my friend in your writing journey.