Reflecting on one year of erikabellido.com

It’s been a year and two months since I started this blog. I wanted to take a moment of reflection on what having this blog for this long has felt like and changes I’ve made to make this blogging experience better for me. 

I started erikabellido.com as a creative outlet outside of work to relieve stress and pick up my long time love of writing. When I was younger, I wrote a lot of fairy tale short stories for myself (I wish I still had them because I would share those) and I went to school to become a journalist because writing was the thing I was the absolute best at. As I got older and entered the corporate world, I lost touch with writing, but in the back of my mind I would think about those days as a kid where I would sit at my desk and type out these short stories. As work was becoming more of a challenge, I needed some form of writing back in my life. 

It’s weird to think that erikabellido.com existed for a full year and I didn’t do very much with it for most of that time! No one knew about it, I barely wrote and posted, it wasn’t something that I made a priority. I started off with a list of ideas in different categories. I created spreadsheets to keep track of what I was writing and a posting schedule. I made a financial investment by buying my domain name and hosting provider. I set myself up for everything a content creator should do; I was organized and ready to go.

But, I really wasn’t. 

I set unrealistic goals for myself and again, no one knew about! How on earth was I supposed to keep up with writing if I didn’t even know who I was writing for or even giving anyone a chance to read what I had to say? I went from not writing or running a blog to trying to post 3x a week! Posting 3x a week sounds small, but for me, I was trying to do a lot in a little amount of time, stressing that I needed to post on time instead of taking the time with the content that I was writing. These two factors, not telling anyone and trying to post 3x a week, are what caused me to not make this blog a priority resulting in not posting for all of the time this blog existed. 

The most disappointing part about not doing anything with this blog over the last year was that I’ve had share-worthy things happen to me that would’ve been exciting to blog about: adopting Lilo, training Lilo to love us and become a confident dog, my trip to Italy, getting engaged in front of the Colosseum, losing Lilo, finding Lilo, our trip to the Philippines, and all the little things in between (pretty much Lilo content alone could’ve been majority of this blog over the last year). Most of that content is still worth sharing and I’m planning to incorporate those in somehow, so stay tuned!

Since I bought my domain name and hosting provider, the year mark was coming up to renew my purchases. Jesse always reminded me that I’m paying for this; I need to put my money to use or not do this at all. But, I couldn’t give up on something that I knew deep down was important to me, I just needed to figure out a way to make this work where I can keep up with it and commit, without sacrificing the quality of my content. 

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts about my writing goal, I started dedicating time everyday to writing when I decided to start my blog up again to build up content. It was perfect timing because it was the start of the new year; I was thinking of my goals and trying to pick a routine to fall into. Then, one Saturday afternoon, I sat down for a few hours and redesigned my blog. I wanted to change the way it looked to something I actually liked and that had a better reflection of me. Once I landed on the current design of the blog and was very satisfied, I refocused my attention to writing. The following Saturday is when I posted my Year of Discipline post. The next step I took is what really made a difference. 

I posted on Instagram. It took me a long time to post about my blog than most Instagram posts because I knew this was completely putting myself out there. To drive this point home even more – I had this blog for a full year and no one knew about it. And, that’s what I kept on telling myself to finally make the decision to hit “ok” and post on Instagram. Once I posted, I felt a sense of relief knowing that I put my blog out there and that I can now actually commit to writing and if only ONE person reads it, that would be enough for me. 

The other important decision I made was to post only once a week. This fit better within my schedule because it gave me more time to write my content and plan my posts. I don’t have to rush to have a bunch of ideas to write about and post constantly, I can take my time. I chose Saturdays as the day I would post because I can wake up and start working on my blog without being limited on time. I could re-read my post I started over the past week, edit it, find or take some photos and make an Instagram post. Specifically, Saturday mornings/early afternoons felt like a good time to post because I would like to envision people reading my blog on their phone or their computers with their cup of coffee or tea. Even if no one is doing that, I like imagining that people are, which gives me extra motivation to make sure I post consistently on Saturdays. 

I’m proud (and oddly emotional) to announce that it’s been 7 (!!) weeks of posting consistently and I’m excited about the content I plan to share! The set up I did a year ago definitely helped me restart my blog right away. I’m hoping this blog can grow and evolve over time, but the important thing is that I remain consistent and continue to talk about having a blog. No one is going to care if I don’t talk about it, and no one is going to read it if I don’t post every week. So, if you’ve gotten this far in reading this post and have read my other posts, thank you for coming along this journey with me! Cheers to one year of erikabellido.com and to many more!