Wow – 25 posts already? And not just random junk thrown up. I am happy and proud of each post and the thought and effort that went into each one. So at this point I think it is time to set some more goals! However, my life has changed drastically over the past few weeks and I feel the need to talk about that for a moment. Please bear with me.
Photo by Rémi Müller on Unsplash
I would like to take a quick aside from the goals portion for a minute to write something really difficult to write. I have not written much in the past few weeks because I lost my father. This was a sudden even for my entire family and it has been a very rough ride. He always wanted me to be happy. Writing this blog makes me happy. Therefore, I am going to continue writing and building and getting better at all of this. I have my dad to thank for a lot of who I am in life. I attribute being an Engineer to him. Growing up and watching him build things with his own two hands. He not only designed and drafted the plans for the house that I grew up in, he built the whole thing by himself. He was incredibly humble. I think that that is one reason I have gone through a lot of my life being comfortable not being the face of things. I have always been comfortable being behind the scenes and in just buckling down and getting the job done. Stepping out of my comfort zone was something I felt the need to do as I have gotten older, and now, with his passing, I feel that need even more. I actually have these words and this blog to thank for a big part of the events in the past few weeks. I was able to write and somehow get through an eulogy at his funeral. The words that I wrote were my own and I am incredibly proud of them and I truly believe that they represented him well. I would not have been able to do that had it not been for the practice that I have had with this blog. So as I hit my 25th actual written post with almost 100 ideas in the queue I am looking to the future. If you get nothing else out of this, I would hope that at least one message that I may write may inspire someone. You never know what thought or idea, story or lesson will impact you and your life. I never thought that writing the past few months would give me the strength to speak like that at a funeral. It may sound so cliche but don’t wait. Don’t hesitate. Just go do. You never know what benefits you will get from trying, asking, expressing, and living you life to the fullest. Thank you for reading, and I love you dad.
So… what’s next? Honestly, I am taking a moment to step back and think about the blog. 25 posts! I can’t honestly state that I thought I would get here. The ideas might fade away. The motivation might wane. Instead, I am more excited about this than ever! So where do I go with this? What goals are next?
Goal #1 – Visibility
It has been at the back of my mind for a while now to consider increasing the visibility for this site. During my research on setting up a blog for my thoughts I read that it usually takes 50-60 solid posts before the Google search engine starts noticing a site like this, so I had always had a rough goal of starting to think about SEO and visibility through things like my LinkedIn bio around the 50-post mark. While that hasn’t changed, I did run across a great post by another blogger that I have added to my ideas list for a future writeup. In checking out this guy’s site, I noticed that he had a Medium link and after following it I saw that all of his posts are replicated on that site. Interesting – so I started doing some research. What a neat site with a very interesting way to get exposure and maybe make a little money in the Medium Partner Program. So this is goal #25.A. Research the partner program and if it looks worthwhile, get that set up in and documented in the next 25 posts!
Goal #2 – Hit the Metrics
When you start something like this from scratch, it can seem like a huge and insurmountable task to come up with enough good ideas to fill the page, however, I have been able to keep the ideas flowing and for the most part, the metrics satisfied through the first couple of months of the site. So goal #25.B will be to maintain this pace through the next 25 posts! That will get me another month or two along this path and will feel good. I am not really worried about this goal. You might not be familiar, but there is a great subreddit called r/showerthoughts where people post random, and often amazing and insightful, thoughts that occur to them pretty randomly. As I have had great success in generating my own random thoughts and ideas in filling up the ideas queue, I am not worried about hitting this goal going forward. For example, while getting coffee this morning I saw a post about Susan Kare who designed many of the fonts and icons for the original Macintosh computer. That gave me the great idea to start a new topic on the blog where I research and highlight the contributions of amazing female Engineers!
Goal #3 – Zen Mastery
It is basically impossible to state how much fun it is and how calming it is start writing haiku again. I started to type “writing poetry” again but somehow expressing the trials and tribulations of Engineering and the workplace just doesn’t seem to me to be as beautiful and elegant as actual real poetry, so I don’t want to even attempt to claim that title. However, the third main goal, #25C, for the next 25 posts is to get back to hopefully daily haiku writing.
Ok – three new goals for the blog. Check. 25th post done. Check. It is time to get back to work! I hope you are having a great day! Now – Begin!!!
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