This article gives another example of The Journey only this time about a journey that has not yet finished and for which I have no idea of the outcome. All the same, through reading this you can gauge its effectiveness against standard goal-setting techniques. This article is 1600 words long and will take 8 to 9-minutes to read.

Blogging - An Example of The Journey

I found out about blogging about a year and a half ago and when I found out that people could make a good income from it I was highly intrigued. My discovery of blogging coincided with my reading of ‘The Long Tail’ by Chris Anderson, which speculates that digital technology can radically change the economic model of product distribution mainly by the fact that digital products require no shelf space and very little in the way of production facilities once initially created. This means that distributors can stock every digitised product available. A music specialist (such as i-Tunes) can stock every piece of music it can get hold of, likewise a specialist in movies, books, software or any other digital product. The surprising result is that everything sells - even the really obscure stuff. Couple this with the fact that the internet can deliver a digital product to any connected computer on the planet and that opens up a huge pool of prospective customers. Since everything sells, you only need to garner a customer base from the hundreds of millions currently out there sufficiently large to support your needs to escape the world of paid employment for others.

Leaving the world of jobs and employment has been my desire for a very long time. I find the demands of work highly oppressive and limiting. I dislike living and organising my whole week around work and I dislike the connection that makes my income dependent upon my time spent at work - not upon productivity nor creativity. It’s the common model for people to earn income but that doesn’t change the fact that it sucks.

I had tried to make it doing freelance and entrepreneurial ventures before mostly based upon creative abilities that I had developed out of interest. However, in the pre-blogging days I was still funnelled into a system that had expensive production and limited distribution. This meant going through middlemen, gatekeepers and judges to determine who gets the access and benefit of those systems. For authors this means agents and publishing deals, for musicians this means agents and recording deals, for artists this means gallery owners and exhibitions, for illustrators this means agents and publishing houses. These are barriers that prevent the creator from reaching an audience and it is very, very tough to get through those barriers.

In my case I had raw talent and a lot of ideas but I could never get them in front of the public for them to enjoy or to decide if they liked them. Raw talent can evolve into refined talent if a person can practice the art full-time and from looking at art galleries it became clear to me that there is no accounting for taste. Everything will appeal to someone - the conundrum is getting the product to those who like and want it. The odds are heavily stacked against anyone making it on talent alone by the traditional production and distribution means. Cheap digital technologies and the internet, with blogging in particular, turns things on their head by bringing production and distribution costs down to incredibly cheap levels. Now independent people can create their own visions and bring them to the market place. Distribution is still challenging but the amount of control that a person can exercise over influencing that distribution and connection to like-minded individuals has increased enormously.

I saw within blogging the opportunity to live a life where I can create the things of interest to me and bring them to an appreciative audience more-or-less by myself and do so in ways that can generate sufficient income to live from, perhaps more comfortably than ever before.

The Process of Blogging

With blogging a person can build slowly and develop incrementally and yet get distributed and connected immediately. This gives a quick, clear and distinct reward for effort made. Instead of taking years to complete a book or an album of music with no idea of public interest and no certain prospect of any return for the effort made, with blogging the feedback comes back quickly. If the feedback is good then this creates great feelings and a desire to do more. If the feedback is poor then refinements can be made early on or else a campaign to garner support for ‘out there’ developments can be engaged upon right from the start.

This is all great because it can lead to developing a daily process of small tasks that accumulate into a great enterprise. When I began blogging I realised that I had three distinct phases to go through, which could happen in parallel.

Phase I - Content
I initially spent four months writing each day to develop articles of interest to me and of importance to others about self-development. I focused greatly on refining the method that I discovered to systematically control and adjust personal attitude so that negative emotions don’t get in the way of taking action. I also focused greatly on the methods of learning and the ways of working with high productivity that will deliver results consistently and effectively.

My ideas became refined as I went along and so rewrites of articles occurred (and still occur on the considerable backlog of part-finished articles that I currently have). Eventually I got clear on my ideas and produced the white paper “How to Operate Your Brain Effectively” and started posting in earnest in November 2007.

Now I have got myself into a routine where I post an article a day. I write articles daily, or else build up a reserve for days when I am not able to write. This is the major part of the process of walking that will take me forward on the journey. At this time I find it easy because I did so much preparation and practice before setting off. I write predominantly pillar articles with highly focused and useful content, which blogging experts say is the best way to create a top quality blog.

Phase II - Presentation and functionality
This is much more of a project rather than a process. I was a complete novice to operating servers, panels and Wordpress blogs. It was a painful struggle in the beginning because I was wholly inexperienced and inadequate to the task but I applied my methods for controlling my attitude and for learning and now I can handle the regular issues. I learned how to take a free theme and adjust it to suit my taste. I also learned how to operate plug-ins and make them work. I still don’t have a theme and functionality that satisfies me so I am now using a developer to put that issue to bed and firmly close Phase II for the time being.

Phase III - Trafficking and connectivity
This phase represents the greatest challenge to me because I am not experienced in such matters as marketing (I don’t really like the term marketing as it’s too impersonal. I consider it connectivity because that is what I sincerely aim to do - make connections with like-minded people and people that I think will benefit from what I do). Also, this activity has a largely uncontrollable nature. I can do lots of different things to influence traffic but I cannot guarantee results. That represents a personal challenge to my attitude. I have to get clear about my desires, expectations and outcomes. It is very important for me to carry out the process of connecting through enjoyment of the task itself and by doing it because I expect a certain result. That certainty won’t happen and I will struggle with these activities if I set myself up wrongly for them.

I go on-line and daily visit forums and similar blogs. On the forums I attempt to give specific answers to problems with links to useful articles on my blog. With other blogs I leave encouraging comments and sometimes add a little bit of extra information that I think supports the content of the article and I also like to link to an article on my blog. I prefer answering problems on forums because I like to give precise answers to perplexing problems. Commenting on other blog posts usually gives less opportunity to do this.

The connectivity activities are the second major part of the process of walking that will take me forward on the journey towards creating a useful, popular and productive blog.

The Uncertainty

I have not set a single goal for this blog in terms of highly specific outcomes completed within a time constraint. I have simply set out on a direction using two processes for making progress: writing great posts and making connections. Those are easy steps to take one after the other.

I have no certainty that the blog will take off and accumulate a large readership in the way that Steve Pavlina, Zen Habits and others have done and I have no certainty that it will ever generate sufficient income that I can turn my back on the world of jobs and employment for the rest of my life. It really doesn’t matter to me. I enjoy exploring and developing my ideas for better living and writing about them. That’s already given me enormous personal benefit of a permanent nature. I enjoy connecting with other people, especially if I can bring them permanent relief from perplexing problems and although the feedback is sparse at this time, the few comments that I have had have made it all worthwhile. These easy steps and the instantaneous rewards that I get from them will keep me going on the journey, step after step. Whether I reach or surpass the thousand mile mark has no bearing on whether I continue or not. I’m enjoying the way and that will always prove fulfilling because I have taken the care to set things up that way.

Related posts:
The Journey
Pinnacle Goal-Setting Doesn’t Work

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