 If you’re a regular Near Side reader, you’ll be seeing a lot more of this guy over the next 30 days. |
Last year, my New Year’s resolutions were to perfect a bagel recipe and learn how to make latte foam art. I don’t know where that came from. I must have been in an upscale café somewhere when someone asked me what my resolution was. Also, I don’t want to say I’m the only person in America whose 2014 resolutions would lead to increased consumption of refined carbs and caffeine, but I’d guess it puts me in a pretty exclusive club. In any case, I never followed through with either one.
So forget resolutions. But I still think working toward goals is important, so instead I’m going to attempt 30-day challenges. This is an idea that gained popularity thanks to a very short TED talk by Matt Cutts. As the head of webspam at Google, Cutts is well-known to those of us who maintain websites for a living. But his TED talk has nothing to do with his day job—he’s just a guy who found a way to try new things. Take a look.
I’ve followed this model every now and then. Once I gave up Facebook for 30 days (it wasn’t hard, though I did revert back to daily mindless browsing once the month was up.) I’ve also done the photo-a-day challenge successfully. So to kick off 2014, I am embarking on a 30-day blogging challenge. For every day of January, I will post a new, horse-related blog here in The Near Side.
What do I hope to accomplish with this? I don’t know, but I enjoy blogging and it often ends up getting pushed to the bottom of my to-do list. This will force me to make time for it. Will the blog posts be high-quality? Probably not. In fact, given the doldrums of my equestrian life these days, I’m already worrying about running out of material, but we’ll see what happens.
So, what should I blog about? And what are your New Year’s resolutions? And if you don’t do resolutions, how do you feel about 30-day challenges? Tell me about it in the comments.
Back to The Near Side
Leslie Potter is Sr. Associate Web Editor for HorseChannel.com. Follow her on Twitter: @LeslieInLex.
Wow, what a great idea. I can’t say I will try something big and adventurous, but a small easy to stick with challenge will be fun, after all, like he said the next 30 days are going to pass whether we like it or not…Thanks
I love the idea. I think I would be interested in it after I spend sometime reading and seeing what blogging is all about. I don’t do resolutions. I fear failure though I still attempt many things and fail at them. lol I just don’t commit to a timeline so much. What I am interested in and would love to read in your blog is about how someone that has overcome a major set back or obstacles in their horse activities such as health, financial struggles, death in the family, or a divorce, and how I can get back into the “grove”. My two horses have been on a pasture vacation for a few years now and I would love to get back into showing western pleasure or halter, but the motivation hasn’t driven my need to rewrite my priorities. I want to do this, but I’m stuck and feel overwhelm or guilt-ridden by my everyday life obligations. So I think that a 30 day goal is doable and it’s a positive way to attempt anything. This article has peaked my interest in blogging because I love to write, and to try a 30 day goal sounds pretty exciting!
I’m willing to try this. How do we start and where do we write it.
cool ideas
There are a lot of free blogging sites you can use if you want to join in. WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr are the most popular. If you start a blog, post a link so we can follow along! 🙂