Can you believe it? It’s been fifty days since I started blogging every day again. Wow, that went fast! For me, anyway. For you, it might have been a long slog since my post topics have been all over the place, with only a thin theme to bind them together: what goes on in my life and in my head.
I blogged every day for many years, and then things happened to get me off the track. Buying a house. Moving. Starting a new life. Even before the house, though, I’d stopped blogging about whatever came to mind. When I was trying to find an agent for Grief: The Inside Story — A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One, I needed to present myself as someone who knew what she was talking about, and a post about apples, for example, just wouldn’t cut it. So I tried to focus on grief topics.
The problem was that I had nothing left to say about grief. I’d spent months working on Grief: The Inside Story, and I included everything I had learned about grief in the book, especially the things that the professional grief community got wrong.
When I started writing the book, I’d been more or less pain free for a year or two (there are always upsurges of grief that one cannot plan for), so I had to dig deep to reconnect with my grief, and in doing so, I’d wrung myself dry.
Consequently, there were no non-grief posts, but no grief posts, either.
As it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered whatever I wrote for this blog. Literary agents are only interested in people who have tens of thousands of followers, and I’m nowhere close to that number. The irony of it all is that if I had such a following, I sure as heck wouldn’t have needed the agents!
By that time, though, I’d lost the habit of daily blogging, so I finally challenged myself to blog daily for 100 days in an effort to kickstart my writing.
Now here I am, halfway through that self-imposed 100-day blog challenge, and enjoying it immensely. I’d forgotten how good it feels to find something to write about each day, something that happened, maybe, and try to show why it was important.
The challenge ends on January 2, 2020, which means there are forty-eight days left until the end of the year.
What are you going to do with those days?
I know what I’m going to do: blog!
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.
Bertram's Blog 
November 12, 2019 at 12:54 pm
Gee, Pat, I’ve posted something new every day this year. Not that it means anything since a lot of it’s BS. Keep up the good posts!
November 12, 2019 at 3:24 pm
Of course it means a lot. Did you ever find the notice of how many days in a row you’ve blogged in the notifications list?
November 12, 2019 at 7:07 pm
No, so I stopped worrying about it.
November 12, 2019 at 7:10 pm
Well, I haven’t stopped worrying about it. I don’t understand why it’s not there. You’re a lot more consistent than I am!
November 12, 2019 at 3:57 pm
I don’t know how you and Malcolm do it. I would be feeling so much pressure to post every day that it would stop being fun. But I’m loving watching you do it, and I like the fact that you are all over the map. That’s part of the fun.
November 12, 2019 at 7:08 pm
Pure craziness, I guess.
November 12, 2019 at 7:09 pm
I find it easier to post every day since it becomes a matter of habit than sporadically, which is a matter of pushing myself. And I don’t do well pushing myself to do anything.
November 13, 2019 at 12:07 pm
Wow. I struggle with two posts a month usually! Very impressive. – Marty
November 14, 2019 at 10:08 am
I’m glad you have things to blog about. It shows how outgoing & interesting you are. As for me, I will be trying to get
my act together for the holidays, which is quite a chore!
November 14, 2019 at 10:26 am
I don’t think anyone’s called me outgoing and interesting before. I like that. Thank you!