Phew I did it! 31 Posts in 31 Days Reflections

The photos say it all.

Each photo above represents one of the posts I wrote this past month. Click on any image to lead to the post. In the month of May, I wrote 31 posts. Contrast that with the months of January through April, where I only wrote 41 posts in total. Clearly this past month was a crazy whirlwind of activity.

Happily, I have finally started making a sizeable dent in my backlog of food photos I've taken over the last couple years, though I'm nowhere near finished.

In this month, I've written about restaurants in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Napa / Sonoma Valley, Las Vegas, Sydney (Australia), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Tokyo (Japan), and Montreal (Canada) plus a handful of recipes.  I haven't even started on the rest of Canada or New Zealand.

Still so much more to write.

What was it like?
My original goal in trying publish 31 posts in 31 days was to see if I still "had it". Did I still have the same drive, passion, and pure energy to "pump" out high quality, detailed posts like I used to when I was first ramping up Tiny Urban Kitchen?

This is no surprise to me, but the experience reaffirmed to me that I am a very goal-oriented person. Give me a goal, challenge, or contest, and my motivation skyrockets. Pending deadlines are good for me. They force me to execute at my highest, most efficient level.

Sure, there were a few nights where this challenge caused me sleep deprivation.  There were times when I felt like kicking myself for setting such an unreasonable goal. It would happen on those days when an evening activity would occupy most of my night and I wouldn't get home until closer to 10:30 PM. Church stuff would take up a couple more hours, and then I would begin writing the next day's blog post . . . . at 12:30AM.

Thankfully, those days were few, and by and large, I managed to front load photo editing on weekends and just focus on writing during the weeknights, which wouldn't take more than 1-2 hours.

What's next?
 

Ha ha, depends. I still have A LOT of backlog content to post (e.g. recipes like quick Taiwanese beef noodle soup in a pressure cooker (!), Boston restaurants I've visited lately, plus many other travel photos).

But I don't want to overwhelm the blog either.

I would love your feedback.

Please comment below and tell me what you think. I am extremely motivated by what others want, and since this blog is totally for you, my readers, I want to do what you all prefer. Below are some things I've been wondering, and I would love to hear your thoughts.

And to those who have emailed me personally supporting me in this challenge and telling me how much you love it, THANK YOU. It means so much to me and it really keeps me motivated to work even harder to make this blog as enjoyable and useful as possible.

OK . . here are some questions for thought!

Questions
Did you like how I skipped around between travel series or would you prefer to have each series be serial?

Do you wish for more Boston and recipe posts? Or do you like the heavy emphasis on travel?

Was a post every day too much to keep up with?

Would you prefer less frequent long, detailed posts or more frequent shorter, "snapshot" type posts? (Of course, I can do a mix of both, though I think currently most of my posts are on the long side)

Any other general feedback?

Thanks everyone!

I'm not sure what I'll do next month. I may still continue to increase my posting frequency compared to before. However, I just may give myself a break on weekends.

🙂

Thanks everyone for joining me in this fun little challenge!

Jen