Lessons Learned from 30 Days of Blogging

Last month, I decided to blog every day. As I explained earlier:

For whatever reason, I’ve found writing hard to do the past few years, and this year has been the hardest. I’ve also been disinclined to think out loud, even though I’ve had a lot I’ve wanted to say and share, both personally and professionally.

Mid-way through the experiment, I reported:

What it’s been doing is helping unlock whatever has been inside of me. I’ve been precious about sharing what I’ve been thinking, not wanting to say them unless I can say them well and feeling paralyzed as a result. I’ve also found it overwhelming at times to try to blog. I guess things are crazy in the world right now, and it’s not only affecting my mental health, it’s hard for me to make sense of it all.

Blogging as a practice has reminded me not to be too precious. The less I try to say, the less overwhelming I feel. The more frequently I share, the less I have to worry about saying it all in one piece, which makes it much easier to write. Plus, even though I don’t think I’ve shown it yet, I’m starting to remember what it feels like to write well. I’m rounding into shape again, which always feels good.

The biggest surprise has been that sharing regularly has helped me re-engage with my broader community. I didn’t think anyone really followed this blog anymore, and because I’m rarely on social media anymore, the algorithms seem to have decided I’m not worthy of most people’s feeds. Still, some people are paying attention to what I’m saying, and getting to hear from them has been a treat and is also motivating me to write more.

After having finished the experiment, I’m not sure I have anything different to report, other than to say that I don’t think I had any breakthroughs after 30 days, and I want to keep exercising this muscle. I thought seriously about extending my project through the end of the year, but I opted against it for a few reasons. Even though it wasn’t particularly stressful, it wasn’t stress-free either, and I don’t need the added pressure this month. It also tires out muscles that I’m using for work right now. I can focus on developing these muscles more when work settles down.

In the meantime, I think the exercise still is helping me share more than I was before. This is my third blog post in December. I think a good pace for me is to be blogging about once a week, especially when those posts are more or less organic.

Maybe the most interesting thing for me was seeing what I chose to blog about. This wasn’t just a writing exercise, it was a sharing exercise. I aggregated all of the tags from those 30 days of blog posts and ran them through WordClouds.com to see if I could detect any patterns.

Not surprisingly, I wrote a lot about COVID-19 and the elections. It was nice to see that I wrote quite a bit about collaboration. This wasn’t my goal, but I admit I was curious to see how often I felt compelled to write about “work stuff” — the original purpose of this blog — especially when I had so many other things on my mind. I loved that I wrote about a lot about making — food and art and photography and stories in general.

Finally, I was curious about the people and places I wrote about. Here were people I knew whom I mentioned in various posts (not including my partner and sister, whom I mentioned often and didn’t bother tagging):

I loved seeing this list. My interactions with others play such a huge role in what I think about and how I feel, and I love being able to share this space with the people in my life.

People I mentioned whom I don’t know:

Places I mentioned:

  • Africa
    • Nigeria
  • Alaska
  • California
    • Bay Area
      • Colma
      • Oakland
        • Joaquin Miller Park
        • Mountain View Cemetery
      • San Francisco
        • Fort Point
        • Golden Gate Bridge
    • Los Angeles
      • Forest Lawn
  • Cincinnati
  • Santa Fe
    • Ghost Ranch

Artist’s Conk

My friend, Travis Kriplean, organized a “mushroom learning pod” for his pre-school age son and friends up in Portland, and he’s been regularly sharing stories and photos from their adventures in my colearning group. I’ve not only been moved by what he’s been doing and why, I’ve been highly envious. Last month, Travis shared a writeup of what he’s been doing, and I thought, “Why does this just have to be for pre-schoolers?” I pinged Travis about starting up a San Francisco Bay Area pod, and I pinged the Bay Area constituents of my colearning group to see if they’d be interested in playing. To my surprise and delight, all of them said yes!

Unfortunately, I know nothing about mushrooms, other than that the edible kinds are delicious and that they play an important role in our ecology. I also already have plenty of things keeping me interested and occupied and didn’t need or want another big project. Fortunately, Travis explained that neither of these would be impediments, and he suggested keeping things simple. Go out, find mushrooms, and document them. Most importantly, enjoy some hot chocolate together afterward.

This framing appealed me for a lot of reasons. It reminded me of Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life, which has felt like my mantra for these pandemic times:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

So that’s what we did. I did a minimal amount of preparation. I found a place close by (Joaquin Miller Park), picked a date and time, and put some hot chocolate in a thermos.

When I arrived at the trailhead, I felt a little bit bad about not being more prepared. It was unseasonably warm, even for the Bay Area — about 80 degrees. The one thing I knew about mushrooms was that they like moisture, and the trail I had picked was bone dry. Still, I had been transparent about my lack of preparation, it was a beautiful afternoon, and my friends had great attitudes, so on we marched.

We found a grand total of one mushroom (pictured above), which felt like minimum success. I also learned some things about lichen (it’s both a fungus and an algae!), and we spotted some beautiful birds, including some Dark-eyed Juncos. I also had learned enough from this experience to start plotting a second trip, this time closer to my home in San Francisco, where it was foggier and hopefully more mushroom-friendly. Plus, drinking hot chocolate with friends as the sun began to wane, even on a warm evening, was pretty great. All in all, I was pretty happy about the afternoon.

But when I got home and tried to identify the mushroom, things got even more interesting. We found it on a Bay Laurel stump, so it’s probably a Ganoderma brownii, but it could also be a Ganoderma applanatum. Both mushrooms are known as “artist’s conk,” because the white underside turns brown more or less permanently when bruised, and artists have been known to do etchings on the bottoms of these mushrooms. They are hardy mushrooms, which is why we were able to find them under such dry conditions, and apparently are also used for medicinal teas.

When I uploaded my photo to iNaturalist (my very first contribution!), I was stunned and delighted to see that the app correctly guessed what it was.

I’m sure I’ve seen these before, but I’ve never stopped to pay attention and to figure out what I was looking at. Next time, I know to look even closer, so that I can more definitively identify it. I had felt self-imposed pressure to find more mushrooms, so rather than slow down to look more closely and carefully document it, I took a quick snapshot, and moved on. This was the very muscle I was hoping to develop, and this experience reminded me how much practice I still need.

Excited about this first foray! Let me know if you’d be interested in participating in the next one! I’m thinking early December at Land’s End.