This is a question I ask myself often. I must admit it didn’t turn out to be what I initially intended it to be, but that’s a good thing. Personally I think it’s important to be reminded of the answer to this question every now and again. It doesn’t just help me to stay focused on my objectives, but it can also help to produce post ideas. I know that the primary challenge to blogging is to come up with ideas to surround a post. The funny thing about this though is that many of you already have a lifetime worth of post right there in your head. The challenge then is not to consider what to write about, but to dig into your purpose for writing in the first place and connect that with the moment at hand. There’s this exercise I like to do when I’m stumped on what to publish each day. The exercise is that I pretty much just sit around! It looks like I’m staring out in space sure, but there’s a lot actually going on here. I’m digging into the moment. I stop and think about what is happening right now. It may just be the hum of a heater, the ticking of a clock, the whispered conversations of others or the constant stream of updates from CNN. Silently and attentively all of these seemingly unrelated happenings can easily culminate in a nice short story, a poem, or a random list of whatever.
I’m not sure what direction this blogging thing could go. I would like to add more short stories, more poetry and more insight into the Self-Publishing world for sure. I also plan to continue with the daily quotes that concludes each days posts. Speaking of which, quotes were not part of my initial purpose for this blog. The quote thing actually came from how I usually interact on Facebook under my personal account, where I post lots of inspirational quotes. I decided later to add them here because there is more room to expound, plus I don’t like Facebook like that. As I polished my goals and plans for this blogging thing, I decided that since I like happy people, why not implement something for that purpose. So I think quotes are important to keep up with the inspiration aspect of my purpose.
Quotes from other authors, writers, and poets are such a refreshing part of the motivation a lot of people need to keep going. Reading other people’s work is also one of the best ways to learn a new skill. And let us not forget about Recipe Sundays! For a little over a month now I’ve been posting delicious recipes to this blog every Sunday which was definitely not part of the plan. How exactly did this begin? To start, I just happen to love recipes. I’m actually not much of a cook (my husband’s the chef around here) so recipes helps motivate me to cook and to find the easiest, yet most delicious ways to do so. The Sunday part is simply because I’m usually at home on Sundays. Because of my already hectic every day schedule, Sundays have become my day to do it all, cook, clean, and anything else left lingering around during the week. I didn’t create a category for Recipe Sundays because I wasn’t sure if I could stay consistent with it, but maybe that is something I will implement to make it easier to find.
In the end, my hope is to produce quality posts that are not just words to publish for the sake of publishing, but words of substance, of flesh and of bone. Words that don’t just capture your attention but come frequently; complete with all the hunger and thirst that is needed to stick around. I suppose my hope for this blog is that I can transform it into the living, breathing personification of all the symbolism that embodies Pearls Before Swine. We’ll see where it takes us.