The idea for this 100 blog posts experiment came last week, during Ali Brown’s I.P. Retreat workshop.
(Yes, I just said that. I attended my first Ali Brown workshop last week! I need to pause to let that truly sink in. I’ve been following Ali’s podcast for years, imagining attending her events and working with her and now… it’s happening. Just go ahead and pinch me.)
To be clear, I didn’t attend the workshop as a guest – I worked it. I joined Ali’s team last month as Marketing and Communications Coordinator and soon-to-be producer of her podcast, Glambition® Radio!!!
But I digress.
What struck me at the event, in a room full of impressive and successful women entrepreneurs and business owners who were older, more experienced, and more financially successful than I, is that we all struggle with the same things:
- Finding time and space to think creatively
- Finding time to write and create
- Sharing bold, outspoken opinions even though it’s scary
- Letting go of perfectionism
- Giving ourselves permission to experiment with new ideas
It was simultaneously humbling, validating, and a little bit disappointing, because there’s a part of me that always thinks I’ll outgrow these kinds of struggles. If only I were older/wealthier/more established/more confident, that would mean that I’ve solved all my problems!
But no. As I learned in group therapy with older women, as I learn every time I meet someone with different identities than I (like age), as I learn when I attend high-caliber events like Ali’s… some struggles stick around. As my mentor Eleanor Beaton says, “everywhere you go, there you are.”
I want to DO something about it. I want to challenge myself. I’ve been getting whispers, nudges, hints from all over that it’s time… to share my ideas. I’ve spent plenty of time dismissing them: too boring, unoriginal, underdeveloped, unqualified, blah blah blah. But then I have experiences that show me that other people WILL relate to them! My ideas may even serve and help and inspire others, which is exactly what I want to do while I’m here.
So I’m going to write 100 blog posts in 100 days. Yikes!! I feel panicky even typing that. 100 days from today is… June 21st. Good grief! So many things could morph and change by then.
What will I do on the weekends, when the last thing I want is to stick to a routine? What about when I travel? But that’s what a commitment IS: doing the thing even when it’s inconvenient and hard. And since writing is important to me professionally and personally, what better challenge than to ACTUALLY write every day, like everybody says you’re supposed to??
I am making myself some allowances: in the interest of done-is-better-than-perfect, I won’t be making these posts as sharable and social-media-ready as usual. I won’t add a text overlay to the featured image. The goal is riffing on a topic, sharing my ideas and developing my thought leadership, using my voice, without editing too much or overthinking SEO or worrying about what other people will think.
I know – I always advise my clients to consider SEO. (As my colleague Nadya Khoja says, if you’re not optimizing for SEO you might as well be writing in your journal.) But SEO is a killjoy! THERE, I SAID IT. And I want this to be low-pressure and genuine. Remember how it feels for writing to be FUN and experimental, instead of a to-do list item??
So: I will be writing every day to enjoy myself and develop my ideas and thought leadership. Care to join me?
I want to shout-out my friends Amina Ahmad of Handmade Habitat and Meg Kissack of That Hummingbird Life to inspiring me to try a 100 Day Challenge.
