Blogging & Journaling: Freeing the Writer Within

This quarter, at Edmonds Community College, I'm teaching a new class called Blogging and Journaling: Freeing the Writer Within. I gave my students the challenge of writing everyday for one week and I was surprised to discover that many of them are doing just that!

 I received so many benefits from blogging and journaling over the years. I wrote 365 blog posts for two years straight. One year was in the form of daily lessons (2010) and another was in the form of inspirations (2013).

I was surprised to discover that one of the students in my class started her own 365 daily posts in the form of reflections. Here is a link to her first post that describes our first class meeting and her inspiration for writing everyday:

http://colormemod.com/365-reflections-reflection-1/

I learned so many things during those two years I blogged daily. Here are a few things I learned:

• I can stick to a goal and complete it. Even a goal that is every day for an entire year!
• There's always something I can write about and in keeping up with the practice of writing every single day, I learn so much about myself.
• The writing that comes from my daily blogs and journals does not need to be perfect. Sometimes there are spelling errors or grammatical mistakes. The important part is to get the words out and I can go back and edit later.
• The daily act of writing is important part of freeing the writer within. Without this daily act, one becomes rusty and out of practice. 
• I was surprised to discover that my daily posts actually attracted a following. Some came just to see if I had kept to my word about blogging everyday.
• Writing every day on my blog helped me to free the writer within and enabled me to write my memoir, Lessons from the Monk I Married, which was published by Seal Press in 2012.
• In blogging everyday, I became part of the blogging world (the blogosphere) and was excited to meet new people and find other bloggers with similar interests. I have met, both online and in-person, so many!
• I realized that you don't have to carve out hours and hours to blog. You can set a timer and create a post in 10 minutes. Then add a photo or a quote to spice it up and....Voila! Everyone can spare 10 minutes in their day. If I did it for two years while writing a book and working, you can too :)
• When you write everyday, the real YOU cannot hide. I call this 'intuitive writing'. You don't edit or judge, you just write. The important part is to keep typing or writing without stopping. Let the words flow out, later you can go back over what you've written. In both my blog and book, my strongest writing has come from intuitive writing. 
• People ask me how I built up my blog. It was the joy of coming here daily to WRITE. It wasn't about seeing how many followers I had or how much money I could make. It was simply about showing up here. From there, things began to happen organically.

I know there are dozens of other things I have learned in the hundreds of posts I've created here. Now I feel confident enough to teach classes at colleges, retreats and in-person about my experiences. It brings me joy to share my journey and be part of other people's journeys to blogging and journaling OR freeing the writer within, as I like to call it :)

Have you every written every single day for any period of time? Do you blog daily or regularly?