It is the fourth week of Blaugust, and the topic is on staying motivated. I normally don’t post very frequently on my blog, so any increase over perhaps two or three times in a month is a significant goal for me. But I’m doing better than I ever had this Blaugust having achieved 31 posts several days ago and 38 in total as of August 21. What is keeping me going?
Other bloggers
There are over 100 bloggers participating in Blaugust, and many of them are producing excellent posts with near daily regularity. I follow along on the Discord channel primarily as I found trying to maintain an RSS feed of all the various blogs to be a bit overwhelming last year. Each morning I spend an hour or so skimming the new posts and reading a few that particularly interest me.
I have found that, this year in particular, there are a lot of inspirational posts I can take my own spin on. I don’t always agree with what was said, and I rarely write as deeply as my cohort does, but I have opinions and like to share them. I find it a lot easier to take someone’s well-formed thoughts and write what is, in effect, a long form comment on the topic they introduced than it is to write something from scratch.
I don’t have an exact count for how many of my posts this month were inspired by others. But a quick skim suggests a number approaching half: I count 14 of the 30 posts on this blog, and several over on my gaming blog, as “inspired” either directly by another blogger or by a group project writing prompt. That is a significant percentage and explains why I keep going back to the Discord channels for ideas.
Even when I don’t steal ideas from other Blaugust bloggers I am still out there finding inspiration in the work of others. News articles on Engadget or Wired give me a starting place for my own thoughts, a spot I might not have arrived at without the external inspiration. It leaves me to wonder how much of what I create is original thought and how much is just reconstituted ideas. But down that path lies madness, and so I don’t pursue that chain of thinking very far.
I still have a few words to write
I often don’t feel inspired to write. This post is not as inspiring as I had hoped it would be, as an example. But even so I still have some words that make the transition from brain to keyboard.
One of the things I am doing fairly consistently this year is writing in short form: well under 1,000 words. This is a lot more manageable than my former style of writing over a thousand words, and it makes even something I’m uninspired by feasible to translate into a post. I’ve almost made it to the end and I haven’t felt the need to struggle for more words to meet some internal measure of proper length.
Having the goal to complete this post today helps, but it isn’t what makes me sit down and write this post. Goals are helpful motivators but, for me at least, don’t define how I behave. They just act as a carrot and a stick rolled into one to keep me on track. But something obviously drives me to keep on writing.
After three years participating in Blaugust I can say I’ve had at least three different experiences. My first participation in 2024 I wrote fairly regularly and completed about 19 posts or thereabouts- I was interested, but not fully engaged. Last year, 2025, I barely participated at all: my energy level was just too low for this type of thing. And this year I achieved 31 posts in less than 20 days, which is a whole new level of involvement.
In all three cases, however, I still had things I wanted to say. The only difference was the frequency of posting and the time I dedicated to the task. At the end of the day, what truly motivates me is my own desire to write, something which seems to be a consistent part of my personality over the years. I expect I’ll keep on participating in Blaugust, my goals will always be modest, and my writing frequency will vary year to year going into the future.
