I was in London last week at an off site planning event for work. One of the sessions in this event had to do with the use of an internal social media platform. The theme of this session was that management (aka me and my peers) should take advantage of the capabilities of this platform and blog.
As seemingly always, I had strong opinions on this topic. I felt that I had some experience in this area having written hundreds of blog entries as part of this "world class" triathlon blog. No one in the event knew of my alternate persona and my mis-adventures in the world of endurance sports. When I explained this many, if not all, were surprised. They were surprised I guess first because of just someone talking about a blog wasn't a traditional topic of conversation but mostly because my physical state does not reflect a typical endurance athlete. Some of my peers tried to find my blog and a few of them were even successful. It was commented that my physical appearance currently vs. my physical appearance in the blog were dramatically different. This difference was not in the positive direction.
I also realized that my blogging has been infrequent at best lately. I thought about this a bit and was wondering if I wasn't blogging because I generally was unmotivated or could blogging more frequently actually translate into increased motivation. Motivation to improve my body composition. Motivation to lose weight. Motivation to get back into shape. Motivation to start somewhere.
I thought of a few decent blog topics to craft so decided I'm going to give this more focus for the summer. There may be less endurance stuff and more life stuff for a while but the mix could change over time. So the answer to "why blog" for me at this time could be "motivation." I know that many of my former followers have changed their social media platform of choice to Instagram or Facebook or Twitter (I'm in many of them too) and not everyone who followed me in the past still are members of the blogosphere. Let's find out who is still there and if this experiment could work.
Game on.
7 comments:
I was just thinking about this topic and you (among other bloggers I miss keeping in touch with). I too have been struggling a bit lately. Maybe resuming my blogging is just what I need to boost motivation in all areas. Maybe a challenge for myself would be some daily posts for a few weeks catching up on all. Thanks for the post.
My blog definitely gives me motivation to get out and do things, and it also reminds me of the me I *want* to be.
Anybody who knows me on fb, of course, knows I have a blog, but if I didn't blog and fb about all the stuff I do, I doubt most people would suspect I do a lot of the things I do; but maybe that's part of the importance of blogs like ours...they show that "regular people" can do big things. I know other blogs were key in helping me see that even if I wasn't fast, I could still belong in the endurance community.
I'm still here though I haven't been blogging or keeping up on reading blogs for a while. I've been thinking about blogging a little more frequently. We'll see.
It is definitely good for motivation. I agree with you on that. I'm going to try to blog more as I navigate the uncertainty that is my fitness routine of late and see if that helps me gain clarity and get motivated to do SOMETHING
I'm amazed at how old the kids have gotten. Tomorrow is Ella's birthday, she's turning 9 and reads like a champ now. That means my blog is as much of a historical chronicle of their childhood as it is an output of my triathlon exploits and saddening failures. My goal for the blog is to one day be able to export it to a word doc sorted by post date ascending, so that the oldest posts read first, and get it printed and bound into a book. After almost 600 posts and counting, I think the kids would be interested in seeing their childhood from my perspective. I know I'd love to see how my dad thought when we were younger.
You could do something similar with the internal portal, use it to show the executive's thought patterns and points of importance. It's another way to provide broad communication.
I have definitely found that it goes both ways, at least for me. I find that if I am blogging, I will look for more ways to be active in order to not bore people. I can't have a running/active blog and not run, right?
I'm having trouble blogging, but I do find that if I at least blog my workouts for the month, it is in a convenient place to look back at.
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