Five Months In, Insights on the Journey So Far

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5 years ago

Five Months In….

Here are a few insights from our first five months here at WA. If I were to wrap up our journey into a concise few sentences it would be this:

Out of the gates with huge enthusiasm and having a lot of fun creating our own little passion project, our website.

The “Honeymoon” period lasting around three months, with the high of all things new and exciting with no pressure. Then comes the “Overwhelm” period, where the more you know the more you realise what you don’t know. All this information to absorb and action.

Okay, let’s tackle Instagram. Wow, Instagram is incredibly consuming (in more ways than just time). Okay next let’s learn about Pinterest. WOW, Pinterest is 10 times more complicated than Instagram…

There was a period there where our little set out schedule was working well. But this somehow transitioned into too much to do with too little time. We felt we had become prisoners to the desk and the computer.

This starts a negative cycle of no time for doing what our passion project is all about (trail running) which in turn means fewer opportunities for content on the social media platforms (which of course are set up to feed to the website).

So, finally we get to where we were about three weeks ago. Our son visited from Australia so we decided to take a complete break from the website and training for the two weeks he was here. Good chance to reflect, recharge and be ready to charge forward after his visit. But he left and this huge, intangible cloud fell upon us – PROCRASTINATION.

I would get on the computer to write a post and find every possible reason and excuse to put off starting. Go through emails, check social media, waste time.

I decided to catch up on many missed WA blog posts as I thought this would bring me the motivation I needed. Which it did by the way, but having my emails chocked up with SO MANY blog notifications meant it took like two days just to go through them all.

I loved reading the blogs, being inspired and being interactive. But this meant no time to get back to our schedule of 3-4 posts per week.

I’ve realised it keeps coming back to the same thing – CONSISTENCY. And I should add, BALANCE. So, while the website and content creation were lacking, we were at least concentrating on our trail running training. My consistent efforts were really paying off and I have been seeing a noticeable lift in fitness.

While I am disappointed in the drop in momentum on the website and WA training, I’m super pleased with the results of consistency in this area. After all, this is living what our website is all about, the reason we chose this niche as it’s our passion.

Today it was back to training. Focus for the week – finish the training, mentally unblock ourselves and move forward. Part of the training was to write a blog on where we’re at (voila!) which has actually been very therapeutic.

With the opportunity to reflect on where we’ve come, I’d like to ask my fellow WA members their opinion on a couple of aspects thus far:

There are several tasks in training unticked for several reasons. Eg. I have not started a Facebook or Twitter account. I feel that focusing on a couple of platforms and doing them well is more desirable than trying to do them all (and not doing such a great job). What are your thoughts on this?

We haven’t signed up for Adsense as I’m not sure we’re a) ready for that traffic wise or b) whether we even want to incorporate this at this point. Again, your thoughts/opinion?

I guess overall, I’m really quite happy with where we are and how far we’ve come. Afterall, this is a marathon not a sprint and we’ve barely left the start line. I’m reminded of a quote I have on my vision board which is apt on the run as it is in life “It doesn’t matter how slow you go, as long as you don’t stop”.