About a month ago I was stressing out. There were a number of factors that were playing into my feeling that things were falling apart and I didn’t have time to get to everything I wanted to. As has been the case in the past, the first thing to be jettisoned was my commitment to this blog. I skipped a day here and there, barely publishing one post much less the thrice-daily cadence I aim for.

My daily traffic for the last month.

This stats chart reflects that. It is the perfect representation of “commitment” and the consequences for letting that flag. You can see the exact date when I didn’t have the time to publish anything. And when I did that week and the one that followed it wasn’t much, or it wasn’t very substantive. I wasn’t doing what I needed to do to hit my end-of-year goals, much less keep up the momentum I’ve managed to achieve since I started publishing regularly here almost two years ago now.

My monthly blog stats for the last 2.5 years.

When I saw these stats weren’t an aberration – there have been peaks and valleys before, of course – I reminded myself that you only get out of content marketing programs, which is what this is, what you put in. My goal here is not just to write about what’s interesting to me but also ultimately to make a name for myself find work, either full-time or freelance.

I’ve made some changes to my daily schedule that will get me back in the routine of publishing multiple (at least two) posts daily. That’s just necessary if I want to achieve certain things. Until then, those stats will stare at me accusingly, reminding me there’s value in maintaining consistent output, especially when those posts can speak to the audience.