Welcome to the Be A Better Blogger- Sustain Your Effort Edition. This is where I share all the tricks of trade at cut rate prices with you. Ok, that last part was a lie because what I am sharing here is absolutely free.
The only word in the entire English language that sounds prettier than Free is your own name. That is right, people love the sound of their own name. And remember if you are  someone who doesn’t it means that you suffer from severe mental and emotional problems. Don’t you just love how I insult those who disagree with me because everyone knows that the best way to convince someone that they are wrong is to insult them.
Or maybe that just works in politics, I dunno. Sometimes I think about becoming a politician. Might be fun to be completely detached from reality and say whatever the hell I want and pretend that I have all the answers.
There Is a Point and A Purpose
There is a point and a purpose to all that I do here. Every single dot, dash and semi colon has its place. Don’t talk to me about being grammatically challenged because I have forgotten more than you once knew, probably forgot more than your parents too.
Does this mean that I am doing a good job of  following Judy’s advice in using my blog to build a believable brand as an author? I don’t know but I can say that I feel pretty good about what happens here. I still like showing up each day and I still feel like I can punch out hundreds of thousands of words with reckless abandon.
That reckless abandon is important to me. It is part of how I know that writing is something that is filled with joy for me. And that is part of my daily mission to find joy and do the things that help me manifest it in positive ways.
Ideally that means that you feel my joy and it rubs off on you just a little bit.
Relate to Others
These words we share here are offered for a million different reasons by a million different people. If our purpose is to build a community of readers, writers and others than those words have to help others relate to you. They have to serve as a window into your world and shine a light on things that others recognize within themselves.
Blog posts about old jobs and the experiences we had are good at doing that. Most people have found a day or two to be challenging. More than a few have wished that they didn’t have to sit at a desk all day to make a buck. Write about the boy/girl that got away or might still be and you’ll find an audience.
Stories about children, parenting, family, your dreams and of course blogging are good too. Don’t let a lack of comments fool you into thinking that you should quit. Goodbye Grandma receives a steady flow of traffic but there are no words in the comment section that show that.
Sustain Your Effort
There are a lot of important things to remember about blogging and no doubt that sometimes it can feel overwhelming. A good design that is user friendly, fast loading page and pleasing to the eye goes a long way.
It is something that I need to work on here. I need more images and I need to tweak things. Eight years into this crazy game I am constantly juggling and adjusting this and that. But in my eyes that is only part of the package and in some respects secondary.
Great content makes a huge difference too, but if you can’t sustain your effort than it might not matter. There are no overnight success stories in blogging at least not the way that I define it. You need time to figure out who you are and to find your voice but you also need time to build your community.
When you sustain your effort these things happen at a natural pace and you wake up one day with a broad smile on your face because there is beauty in blogging. You have built something. You are the creator of a world that otherwise would not be and you are privy to something special.
While you ruminate upon that I’ll leave you with links to the last set of songs that I listened to on iTunes today:
Waterfall “May This be Love” – Jimi Hendrix
Fire- Jimi Hendrix
Closer– Nine Inch Nails
Plowed– Sponge
Hurt– Johnny Cash
Heart of Gold– Johnny Cash
I Hung My Head— Johnny Cash
Suspicious Minds– Elvis Presley
In The Ghetto- Elvis Presley
Blue Suede Shoes– Elvis Presley
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