⚡The Content Creation Journey

Most Beginners Don’t Even Make it This Far (But You Can)

How my first 90 days on Medium went, and what I will do in the next

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The first quarter is already over! (Happy Easter, BTW!)

I have no complaints about what I’ve managed to pull off after three months of pushing myself.

Considering I have two little boys and a 9–5, I’d say things are going at about the rate that I hoped they would go.

I think I’d like to write this type of article for every quarter this year in similar fashion to the way that I chronicled my TwiX journey last year with a monthly thread.

In each, I’ll share a little about what I did, the challenges I faced, and progress I made.

Here goes nothing…welcome to the first quarter overview!

January → April

I didn’t really think too hard about pushing myself on Medium in January, as I was working to push out as much content as I could on TwiX and schedule it all out for the entire 90-day sprint.

The crazy part was that I did succeed in achieving that in a few weeks.

So I did what any sane person would do…I tackled writing articles here on Medium.

I went from a handful of articles from my fitful start back in October to over 70 (this one is 71).

• Some were short.
• Some were less short.
• Some were written without me entirely present (like my fever one).

You know how it is…

You think you have an idea about what you’re going to do, but you end up full-on going ham on something completely unexpected.

Sometimes your writing sessions will make some pretty sharp left turns that ignore the stoplights, the stop sign, that cop flashing his lights at you…

(Yeah maybe don’t do that, but things can get out of hand sometimes!)

For me, writing an article on a near daily basis was a very different beast from the one I tackled for short-form. I didn’t veer off the beaten path too often there, but I had plenty of moments to do that here!

In some ways, it was like ripping the bag off my head in terms of the length restrictions as I was used to writing 240 character short bursts.

While TwiX has evolved to suck in everything and the kitchen sink, the tweet format is still a powerful one to get a handle on.

I’m looking forward to repeating this process in April because good gravy do I have a mountain of content to play with now!

It’s like I went and dunked a sponge into a huge bathtub…

I’m going to enjoy squeezing this sucker!

February → May

I hit a solid stride during February with my writing and content creation because I didn’t really have a feel for how I wanted to approach this journey.

I simply dove in head-first.

It was also a shorter month despite the leap year.

The only setback that I had was the fact that I was consistently sick on any given week, and I didn’t even realize just how bad it was until I took my temperature one night before writing.

I wouldn’t recommend it attempting writing through a fever too often, but it DID make for an interesting read in hindsight.

This month of writing was like when you first stop using the training wheels on your bike, where you feel like the wheels on the bike just “pop” into alignment.

Then you stop pedaling, and you coast. The joy of feeling the wind go by and the sun shining down…

Then your stupid bike helmet that mom insisted fit falls over your face.

Everything goes dark for a moment and next thing you know, you’ve hit a parked car and three ladies with strollers see the whole thing go down.

Yeah, that was my experience with February.

Anyways, this month was also when I had more time to engage, and I met a lot of amazing people (I’d be here forever listing all of you), and I’m excited to continue to do so in the next sprint!

The month of May could be tricky as it’s when school ends so the transition period will require adjustment, but I plan to refine and up the volume a bit then.

And it’s going to be HOT!

March → June

As I reflect on this past month of March, I realize that I let go of a lot of my anxiety and reluctance to use my “real” voice as I began to define my goals and values in a framework that I can use moving forward.

The SPARTan project is the result of this month’s ramblings.

(I kinda like that…it has a nice ring to it and enables me to tap into my values easily.)

The most annoying challenge that I had this month was facing the last aspect that completed the acronym for this endeavor…

tangible evidence.

If you’re also a consummate hoarder of knowledge with polymathic tendencies who enjoys exploring one thing after another but have no idea if there are other people like you…there are.

This is the greatest challenge for us. It’s hard to plant our flag because it keeps changing, and we keep changing locations we want to plant it on.

I think I said “F it” and snapped the flag into a few pieces to stick into different spaces and tied them all together.

This final piece was the one that I’ve been dreading the most over this 16-month long process because I honestly still didn’t think that I had said anything that people would care about enough.

That feeling finally shifted itself yesterday.

The next three sprints will see me steadily building on this…5th element.

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist. 😁)

I think June will be the target to put something together to share all my experiences to help those of you who are clueless but hopeful (like me).

I’m also aiming to have a solid distribution system in place similar to the ones that I keep hearing about across social media.

What’s the message to this strange and wacky piece full of odd references and specific vignettes?

It’s the following:

• Commit to doing something for at least 90 days. You’d be surprised just how much you can pull off if you just stick to it.
• If you miss a day, don’t miss a second (unless you’re crazy sick or something equally justifiable). Despite my choice of words, this is a marathon so pick a pace and stick to it!
• Volume yields visibility. You can’t see patterns emerge if you only dabble a bit here and there. The work you do will show you a lot about yourself that you’d otherwise be completely clueless about…so stick to it!

So that’s my blurb about the first 90-day sprint of this Medium process.

The second sprint starts today (on April Fool’s Day no less).

I pity the fool (it’s me…hi).

It’s going to be fun!

Thanks for reading!

Can you tell that I’m exhausted? It’s frickin Easter Sunday, and that means eggs and candy and running around looking for shells and candy wrappers and…yeah.

⛵I’m the Night Writer. Writing to share my discoveries on my voyage while sailing by starlight. Follow me because I share what I find as I learn to write, offer, and distribute my life stories and ideas!🌠