I failed (to write a blog)
I started this blog with the intention to write posts regularly... I lasted two days, in which I wrote poor articles (if you can even call them that).
Hey, don't laugh! It's more than I expected to achieve.
But have I accepted defeat? No. I have tried to learn as much as I can from this failure, and I am ready to try again now.
Here I share with you the reasons that, from my perspective, have made very complicated to achieve my goal, and what I am gonna change to do better.
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I -probably- chose a bad moment to start. A few days after my first post, I went on a vacation to Germany. I spent two weeks there during the which I tried to unplug the best I could, what lead to a huge gap between my first and my second posts. I noticed this had an effect on my motivation and focus, both had dissipated greatly after I came back.
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I set a goal hard to achieve. Yes, I want to make it my habit to write every (or almost every) day. But expecting me to go from writing one post per year to write one on a daily basis is not very realistic. Also, the topic I chose (accessibility) is something I am very interested in but I still don't have enough knowledge or experience to write decent articles in one or two hours.
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Lacking motivation. Since there's not a lot of time in the day to write, causing the posts to be terrible, and seeing the huge gap between the first and second post (which actually meant I had already failed) was a reason to stay unmotivated.
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Impostor syndrome. In addition to all of this, thoughts of self-sabotage were filling my brain. If this doesn't work, it's probably cause I am a failure myself. I am not good enough for this. If I am not gonna achieve it, why should I try? If nobody will ever read my post, why should I spend my time on this?
If you are facing a similar situation, know that this is no reason to throw in the towel. Just because it didn't work last time you tried, doesn't mean it can't.
In my case, I have learned that demanding myself one post per day is not reasonable. I am more motivated by the idea of fewer but better quality posts. So my new goal is to write every day, but with no time limit (I can work on a post for several days) and not forcing myself to publish it unless I feel happy enough with the result (here is the challenge to not be too perfectionist, but that's a different story...).
I was using 100DaysOfA11y hoping it would work as a way to keep my motivation up to learn and write about accessibility very often. But I will postpone this for a moment I am ready for this challenge. Again, I can't see this as a defeat but a lesson on how to do better next time.
I hope you will join me in this new adventure and that you, too, will give another chance to something you have always wanted to do. It's never too late.