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Because It's Okay to Laugh Sometimes

Lessons Learned The Journey The Year of Blogging Faithfully

Day 363

(Originally published on The Year of Blogging Faithfully, July 29, 2015 ©Bethany Turner)

Yesterday I was asked what I have learned about myself during this Year of Blogging Faithfully. Today, as we near the end of this torture experiment, that sounds like the perfect idea for a blog post! Some of these are things I learned about myself, while some are more general life lessons which I will take away from the year.

  1. I have a sense of loyalty and commitment which I wasn’t aware I had. Truthfully, I didn’t keep with it to prove to myself that I could. Maybe originally that had something to do with it, but as time went on, I didn’t want to let anyone down by quitting early. (And no, I’m not implying that I believe people the world over would have torn their clothes and covered themselves in ashes if I didn’t blog every day.) Maybe no one would care if I had quit early, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I had made a commitment, and some people had committed to going along on the journey with me. I had to hold up my end of the bargain.
  2. Sometimes, there just isn’t much to say. There are days which really are uneventful, and there are days when you just don’t feel like sharing.
  3. Sometimes, when there isn’t much to say, you still have to say something. I learned that I’m not always very good at this.
  4. Humor is my default. Those times when there just wasn’t anything to say, I fell into quirky mode. (I seem to recall an entire blog about not wanting to blog, set to the tune of Jim Croce songs…) And I think that’s my natural tendency in life, as well as blogging.
  5. I can find something to write about every single day. Even if it’s junk. So I need to continue writing, every single day. Even if it’s junk.
  6. I have an amazing, inspirational support system surrounding me. I have friends and family who read the blog every single day. I made new friends through the blog. People cheered me on, commented on what I had written, and showed they cared – just by taking a couple of minutes out of their day to support me on this journey.
  7. I often jump in and commit to something before I consider the reality of the situation. I had no idea what I was getting myself into with this commitment to blog every day for a year.
  8. Sometimes it’s good to jump in and commit before fully thinking it through.
  9. It’s difficult to tell people about your life, face-to-face, when you aren’t sure what they’ve already read. I can’t count the times that I began a sentence with, “I’m not sure if you read my blog today…” (Don’t worry…this was said only to people who I knew tended to read the blog. I didn’t start conversations with strangers that way.) And then, if they had, I didn’t have much to say because I didn’t want to bore them – since they’d already read it. If they hadn’t, I had to assure them that was fine, and I was only asking because I didn’t want to repeat myself.
  10. We, as a society, over-share online, taking away the need for conversations.
  11. Whether I want to or not, I sometimes filter what I have to say, based on who is in the audience. But not as much as I thought I would. And I’m proud of that.
  12. Days are long, but years are not.
  13. My life is full of cycles. I guarantee: nothing will make you more self-aware of your moods and emotions than feeling something so unique, so profound…and then realizing you wrote about the same unique and profound feelings two months earlier.
  14. My life is full of miracles. I guarantee: nothing will make you more aware of the role God plays in your life than watching it all play out before you, day-by-day. When you are able to go back and say, “On Day 42 I was worried about this…” and “On Day 112, this happened!” you are able to ponder and reflect on the things you may have otherwise forgotten about. I just can’t help but think of how much easier things may have been for the Israelites, wandering in the desert, if they’d had a blog to go back and read… (Please ignore the absurdity of that statement. Yes, I know that there were records being kept. And yes, I know that if they’d been able to blog, they probably would have had GPS as well. Don’t be picky! You know what I mean!)
  15. I’ve lived a life which has stories worth telling.
  16. I need to tell them.

Bethany Turner

Bethany Turner is the bestselling, award-winning author of romantic comedies such as Plot Twist and The Do-Over. She has been writing since the second grade, when she won her first writing award for explaining why, if she could have lunch with any person throughout history, she would choose John Stamos. She stands by this decision. Bethany now writes pop culture–infused rom-coms for a new generation of readers who crave fiction that tackles the thorny issues of life with humor and insight. She lives in Southwest Colorado with her husband, whom she met in the nineties in a chat room called Disco Inferno. As sketchy as it sounds, it worked out pretty well in this case, and they are now the proud parents of two teenagers. Connect with Bethany at seebethanywrite.com or across social media @seebethanywrite, where she clings to the eternal dream that John Stamos will someday send her a friend request.

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