Blog Berry Juice: 3 Blogging Struggle Bugs

​Blog Berry Juice is a triannual post where my squirtle and I treat one of my newer pokémon out to the Shuckle Shack to drink some berry juice and discuss the progress of The Grown-Up Pkmn Trainer.  This post’s guest, Ribombee.
 
First, let’s check out the blog’s stat summary.  It has an average of 55 unique visitors a day, with an average of 150 visitors each weekend in April.  The most popular posts continue to be the monthly financial reviews, although 4 Financial Weekly Events was the most read in April.
 
The blog’s social media following seems to continue to grow.  Instagram, the place to view all the blog’s art in one spot and learn about their backstories, has 62 followers.  Twitter, the place to hear about post updates, read U-turn Tuesday posts and see Shadow Sneak Peeks, has 71 followers.  Facebook, the place that announces when posts go live, has 35 follows.  The subscription e-mails, which I send out right after a post goes live before any social media, has stabilized at 15 subscribers.
 
Since the beginning of 2018, I feel as though my life has been probably the busiest it has been since grad school in 2012.  My evenings have become filled with activism, community meetings, project planning, design work and catching up with friends.  Near the end of March, I tried to pull back some, but then April continued strong.  I enjoy it and am starting to juggle everything better with my blog.  This business has defogged some blogging issues that I have been struggling with.  Today, I want to address my struggles with missing postdates, relatining to topics, and daydreaming about other ways to grow the blog.

---

Scheduling Posts
Each month I have a posting schedule set up at least a month in advance.  Each month it tells me which topics I wanted to write about and when.  It gives me time to think about the topic, research if needed, and plan my time accordingly for both the writing and the image.  In January I was able to have all of its posts started by the end of the first week.  However, that trend is no longer at Dewford Hall and I’ve been trick roomed to constantly feel behind instead of ahead.
 
One of my largest frustrations results from my inability to post consistently on Saturday.  I have had a difficult time balancing my evenings between my newer activities and my blogging.  My posting schedule exerts its pressure on me to meet my postdates, and as a result, generates stress.  I feel defeated when I fail to post according to my schedule.
 
Choosing Topics
When I make my schedule, I look at my growing list of topics and assign each postdate to a topic.  These topics then evolve into three different posts; easy to write, it needs an odd keystone, and I cannot connect with this topic.  The easy to write posts are naturally great to work on.  They flow smoothly out of my mind onto the computer screen like the rivers of Kalos.
 
The more difficult posts take some time finding an odd keystone to give me a solid format that brings everything together.  This commonly happens to my favorite topics when I have too much information and my outline becomes overwhelmed and unable to battle.  When I was writing Priority Transaction Basics, I had over six pages of information before I found the odd keystone that tied it all together.
 
Recently, I have stopped connecting with some of my topics.  As I write I feel like I’m false swiping a shedinja.  I tried to stick with the topic because it was scheduled, but after a week and a half of no progress, I simply skipped it.  Over the last three months, I have skipped at least one post each month due to this problem.
 
Daydreaming of the Future
Since starting the Grown-Up Pkmn Trainer, I have had illusions of grandeur for this blog.  I thought that I would be posting two posts a week by the end of the first three months of launching the blog.  I wanted include a variety of topics like diet, exercise, social things and maybe even sex.  I even thought about eventually having other authors adding to the collection to become The Grown-Up Pkmn Trainers.  Plenty of experience sharing, all through a pokémon lens.
 
Yet, here I sit…  Sixteen months later…  Writing about how I find it difficult to post a single, weekly, personal finance post.
 
Yet, I continue brainstorming new ways to grow my blog.  I have ideas such as starting a YouTube channel or even designing interactive web pages for budgeting, net worths, and even financial pokémon teams.  I see my frustrations when I remember my current limitations that block me from realizing such ideas.  I don’t have the time anymore to do all of this, especially as I fill more of my free time.  I feel like fantasizing is leech seeding some of my spare time that I really need for writing my weekly blog post.
 
Time to Struggle Bug
Now that I know what my struggles are, I have a plan to turn my struggling into struggle bugging.
 
To do that, I will need to take what I’m struggling with and twist it so I affect its stats instead of doing recoil damage to myself.  For the next couple of months, I will be changing my posting schedule.  I have removed post dates and have three general topics, to accompany the monthly financial review and net worth updates, each month.  I will post them when they are ready.  Hopefully, a more fluid schedule will allow more time to find those odd keystones for the more difficult posts.  I also have given myself permission to run away from a topic I don’t connect with and i can choose something more intriguing.  I will also start writing down my grand ideas for the blog to explore and see if they can become realities.  After all, this blog was only an idea I wrote down and started exploring only four months before its official launch.
 
Although I may struggle, I really enjoy this blog.  As I continue to grow in my non-blogging life, I look forward to seeing how it affects the blog and helps it grow too.  Cheers to the next four months!  Happiny! Chansey!! Blissey!!!
 
Let’s chat:  What's an experience you had struggling with something you enjoyed doing?
 
Further reading:
Giving Myself a Little Credit- She Picks Up Pennies
8 Fails Over 8 Years of Blogging- Budgets Are Sexy
Rockstar Directory- Rockstar Finance (it's a pokédex of over 1,650 Personal Finance Blogs)