Ten Years On

Year-end is a wonderful time for reflections and thanks to the notification from the blogging platform I realised that I have officially completed ten years as a ‘blogger’. Ten years and 300 posts is definitely a good milestone to wrap the year, 2022. Here’s my running down the memory lane version of what was behind the posts that

The start

The first post in 2012 was drafted just to officially close a goal that I had set for myself in 2012 i.e. to start blogging. Getting back to my first post you will literally understand that it was a classic ‘check box’ activity with only couple of lines written.

The first post

The intent of blogging was to get into a habit of sharing my experiences working in the clean-tech space. The early days involved a lot of travel, learning and experiences and I wanted to share all of that in blogs. One thing was certain, I wanted it to be focused on sustainability and in fact the blog name on day 0 was ‘A full circle’, a representation for circularity in the universe.

The run

Some of the posts that I wrote in the first couple of years was just to keep the momentum going, a habit formation cycle. During this period I was also trying to define my own ‘niche’ in terms of writing styles or topics. For all the early bloggers, getting into contests was something that fascinated me. I did write a few of them for sustainability contests and in fact got shortlisted for a few of them too.

The rise

The ‘second phase’ if I could use that phrase was all about adding a bit of data and analysis in my posts. Pursuing a masters programme also helped in that direction. During this phase I would read a lot of reports, policy documents, look at data points and then summarise them. Adding to the originality of posts, I also started creating customised images for each post. Well, it was a lot of effort and time but it was definitely worth it. I received feedback for most of the posts during this phase.

During this period, I also hit a professional milestone of completing five years, an event I commemorated with a blog post.

Hit refresh

While I got decent at writing I was also drawn towards another medium that I enjoyed, podcasts. At start I thought both the blog and podcast have to independently exist which literally stretched me to the limits but over the years (its nearly five years since I started podcasting) I have started to understand the importance of a blog post complimenting the audio version of the podcast because the theme of both are the same. I don’t post long form posts like before but I summarise the key points from the podcast episodes.

The period also coincided with me hitting a decade as a professional in the clean-tech space and just like five years before I wrote a blog post.

While I moved to podcasts, I continued to write long-form posts on books I have read on social media and I thought of creating page on the blog to redirect visitors who might be interested. Well, I have not updated this page often, but I intend to continue (thanks to feedback).

Repeat

Now, finally what’s next for the blog? Well, I will continue to write and combine them with the podcast episodes. I have seen a traction towards newsletters and I definitely see the blog combining well with the newsletters once I launch one. I often get asked about the benefits of the blog, the stats etc. Honestly, I haven’t started the blog to get ‘trending’ on social media or monetise it. It is much more than that.

The questions I ask myself now, remains the same – “Are you getting better by doing this?”, “Are you learning something new in the process?” As long as the answers remain “YES”, its a ‘Repeat’.

(Cover Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash)