Looking back at Sincerely Rita’s first year
Hard to believe it’s been a year of blogging for me. Even though the output was just 12 posts, I put a lot of thought to each and every one. In between each post, I always had the blog in the back of my mind.
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I might be going through big transitions and suddenly have the idea of documenting my struggles. Or sometimes a lightbulb moment comes after I took some time to reflect and realized I’m now able to write about the takeaways in an organized fashion. Or maybe, as I’m going about my daily life, suddenly I see a connection between two things that seem unrelated but are similar in some sort of ways, which usually makes me want to write about it.
Some ideas come intuitively from experiences, and others come at unexpected moments. I try to jot them down immediately as they come up so I don’t struggle to remember them later.
With that said, not all ideas turn into blogs. I usually try to flesh out the content for the idea to see if it’s viable. Sometimes the idea is too big and I have to cut it into smaller chunks which become multiple blogs. Sometimes my thoughts around the topic are not cohesive enough for me to write a piece with a clear enough message. In that case I might put a hold on the idea until when I have enough understanding or reflection on the topic to share in a well rounded manner.
Through blogging, I have learned a lot, but arguably one of the most valuable would be how to organize my thoughts. More specifically, I not only found a channel to document the organization of my thoughts but also established a process that encourages me to reflect on my experiences and process my learning.
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Sometimes the pressure to publish can be a lot to handle, but after publishing I always feel happy and energized. Part of it of course comes from having completed the blog. But a big part of it comes from finding order in my seemingly scattered thoughts. I have a tendency to overthink a lot of things, and often times once I make sense from my thoughts I can get out of the overthinking cycle.
And then there’s also a sense of satisfaction from reaching some sort of conclusion in my reflection. If it’s something positive, I got to document it. If it’s something negative, I figured out the lessons learned and got some closure.
I’ve also realized how difficult it is for me to come up with ideas. I think I always had a guess this was going to be the hard part of blogging for me but this past year of blogging definitely confirmed it. I tend to pick topics about resolving a problem that I’ve encountered, but I would really also like to write about things that require me to do research or exploration.
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Since I just moved to a new country, with a new environment to get accustomed to, naturally in the coming year the topics will likely still revolve around overcoming struggles a little bit. But I do hope in the near future to expand outside of this theme and make my blog reflect more interesting parts of my life journey.
