I found a post by Juha-Matti Santala about Blaugust and couldn’t stop thinking about it. He writes to work through ideas in his head. Once he’s got them figured out, he shares them so other people can read them, push back, or add to them.
I’ve also noticed people signing up for Blaugust the last two weeks. Seeing that made me think, why not join, even though I already post a lot of blog posts every month.
Then he explains Blaugust. It’s a month-long blogging event every August. A whole community of bloggers commit to writing more, together. There are goals built in too. 5 posts gets Bronze. 15 gets Silver. 25 gets Gold. 31 gets the Rainbow Diamond.
Here’s the thing. I already post a lot. Last month I posted 78 times. Movie ratings, reading updates, Word Nerd Alert posts, quick reactions, and full titled posts, all mixed together.
I post about whatever’s on my mind. A reaction to something someone wrote on their blog. A word I learned. Something that caught my curiosity and I want to dig into more. A recipe I want to try someday, though I haven’t actually gotten to that part yet. Movie ratings, book reading progress. Mostly I talk about AI and tech. Sometimes I write about what I’ve been doing with my own blog, even when I don’t need to, just because I want to share it. That’s what blogging is supposed to be. Writing what you want to say, whatever’s on your mind.
For Blaugust though, I’m not counting all of that. I’m only tagging titled posts, and leaving out movie reviews, Bookshelf posts, Word Nerd Alert, and posts about the blog itself. Just the posts where I actually sat down and wrote something.
So this year, I’m just going to keep writing the way I normally do, join the Discord, and share what I post. No forced goal, no number I’m chasing. Just going with the flow and seeing what happens.
If you blog too, Blaugust is open to anyone. Sign up here, or just join in and see how it goes.
So let’s start Blaugusting. Just for fun, to see where it leads me, and see how many responses I get along the way.