It’s August 31st, 2025. It’s the last day of Blaugust 2025. And this is the 31st post. I’ve made it. We’ve made it
I have a few more Blaugust related posts in the pipeline—namely the last link roundup (following on parts one, two, and three) as well as some sort of summary of general feelings and goals and stuff—but today is about some things I’d suggest to someone looking to take on survive Blaugust. This someone could’ve easily been myself a month ago.
I was more interested in building a solid writing habit than specifically publishing a bunch of content, so I started off writing and posting on the same day. This went fine for maybe a couple of weeks, but eventually Life™ got a little tricky, and I found myself writing the day before publishing, which still had the same effect. Ultimately I ended up with a few non-writing days here and there, which is a pretty great result overall.
I really liked writing the day/night before and publishing in the morning, and if I were to do this again with this same goal of writing consistently, I’d strive for that. But that’s a pretty intense schedule for someone trying to squeeze this in after work, family, and other obligations, so doing a bit more pre-writing is probably more sustainable. Writing enough on the weekend to skip two or three weekdays during the following week sounds like a good approach.
Publishing an easy one here and there is nothing to be ashamed of, I think. The home screen tour and blog questions challenge come to mind. I’d decided to do these each a few days before I actually did, and had them at the ready for days when I couldn’t write anything more substantial. I did my best to make them worthwhile, but recognize they were essentially little “breaks”.
Now, to be clear, I’m not suggesting you throw your standards in the trash wholesale. That would be a bummer, and likely not a price worth paying just to stick to the schedule.
I’m merely suggesting you consider allowing yourself to publish posts you might not think are your absolute best, or even posts you think you could improve, which you probably could, but there’s only so much time, so don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Sometimes a mostly baked thought is OK and you’ll be forgiven for foisting it upon your readers.
If you have old ideas you wanted to write about, this could be a great opportunity to dust them off. I found the pressure of not having all that much time to be a great motivator to let go of the notion that these old notes or drafts might turn into something truly world changing and just publish something decent.
Participating in group projects is great. I hadn’t really ever done anything like it before, and it was a fun experience. For me the prompts solved half of my usual problem—what to write about—letting me figure out the answer. It was also super fun to read others’ takes on the same day, generally after posting mine. I got to post some music, a hot take, and a screen recording of a game as a result, none of which I would’ve done on my own.
In addition to planned group projects, I found it fun to just respond to others’ posts. This is especially great if the original author doesn’t have comments on their blog, which tends to be quite a few people, myself included. I stand by my reasons, but will almost certainly want to read any post inspired by my own.
The official Blaugust Discord server is pretty great. I’ve immensely enjoyed conversing with other participants in real-time(ish), and the energy has helped me keep going when things got a bit dicey a few times. The community is lovely and helpful. Bonus: this is where I found the group projects.
This one is perhaps hypocritical, since I definitely sacrificed some sleep to the gods of consistency, but it’s OK not to hit all 31 (or however many you targeted) posts. It really is. You won’t be less of a person, whether you skip some days intentionally or unintentionally. Blaugust is ostensibly about posting 31 times in 31 days, but deep down it’s about what actually works for you, and you get to decide that. Plenty of people haven’t hit their original goal, and that’s totally fine.
I’m intentionally breaking the streak on September 1st to avoid it becoming unhealthy. This may be wise for you as well.
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