To date, MyHappinessObsession has six-hundred and seventy-seven published posts including today’s offering. What this means, as I have been noticing, is that I will from time to time repeat myself. I am, after all, the same man writing from day to day, with the same set of interests and topics I like to write about. Several times recently I have been thinking about writing a post, and upon searching on my blog for a similar theme, I find a post where I say something similar. In fact, sometimes I have read posts where I thought, “Wow, this is even better than I was about to write!”
For instance, I was just working on a post about how we can write the story of our lives. I thought, “That’s an interesting topic, and I am still working on mastering that ability!” I did a search where I found this post: Day 75: Write the Script of Your Life! This was from 2018, during my first 365 Day Blogging Project. I read the post and thought, “Wow, this is wonderful!” And then I felt a little silly, as if I had done something embarrassing by nearly writing about the same thing twice.
I know, that kind of thinking is what is silly! When I stop to think about it, I remind myself of how learning works. It reminds me of piano teaching. When I teach my students, I find myself saying the same things again and again. After all, the same themes come up again and again, and often the process of mastering a new concept takes time. The old saying goes, “The mother of all learning is repetition.”
There’s a reason for this. We don’t master complex things right away. It never bothers me when I have to repeat myself over and over with my students. Why should this blog be any different? Here I write about topics that I too want to master, and that I’m interested in learning more about. Either way, clearly there is no crime in repetition. Awhile ago I heard the saying, “You teach what you wish to learn.” That says a lot about my approach here. When I’m explaining concepts, I mainly do it because it inspires me at the moment. If the thought is inspired, it stands to reason that it is worth articulating, even if might cover ground I’ve covered before.
At either rate, I notice myself digging a little deeper nowadays to make sure that my sentiments are somewhat unique, or at least to keep in mind what I wrote about before. On the other hand, why does that really matter?
May be some thoughts are worth repeating 😉
What you can do is create a content calendar; it will let you know what and when you need to post something on your blog.
One can also look at the content calendar to see what they already posted.
Hi Renard,
Thanks for trying to be helpful. I don’t have issues knowing when to post, nor is repeating myself really a problem.
To some degree, I was simply expressing my own foibles, a bit of insecurity about covering old ground on my posts.
Expressing my foibles is part of what I do on my blog 🙂
I appreciate the time!
-Chris