Maya’s Own

 

1. Don’t know anything about computers
2. What is blogging? I know nothing about blogging
3. I am a Luddite
4. Should stick to pen and paper
5. I don’t trust the internet
6. I don’t trust geeks
7. I cannot write to save my life
8. I cannot type, you need to type on a keyboard don’t you?
9. I wouldn’t know what to blog about.
10. Blogging is for younger people
11. Blogging is for older people
12. Life is too hectic, I have no time to blog
13. I cannot blog while the kids are still at home
14. I have nothing to blog about
15. You have to be educated in how to blog
16. Cannot make any money
17. Tried it once, didn’t work for me
18. You have to be a web designer to set up a blog
19. Too many people are already doing it
20. Nobody would want to read my blog
21. People will laugh at me
22. I am not smart enough
23. Wouldn’t know where to start
24. I will  need money to set it up and keep it going
25. I am just not sure about all this internet terminology, I am not a geek
26. There are too many other things I need to take care of first
27. I am too lazy by far
28. The internet is very dangerous and someone my steel my identity
29. The internet will be shut down by the government any time now
30. It is too much hard work for a single person, you need a team around you.
31. The internet is saturated with brilliant writers, how could I possibly compete at their level.
32. I would have to give up my job

Being a healthy blogger is most important, you are sitting at your desk all day keeping fuelled up with coffee and snacks. This can only go on for so long because before you know it you may end up looking like Jabba the Hutt.
No exercise and sugary food are a definite no no, simply put it is not just your body shape that will suffer but your overall health may just be going down the proverbial gurgler. Add to this the very real possibilities that your relationships will suffer as a direct result.

Here are some tips to stay healthy while you blog:

1. Get a timer and stop every hour for ten minutes, get up, stretch walk outside and rest your eyes a bit.

2. Drink at least 3 litres of water

3. Replace your coffee with green tea, it contains caffeine as well but is also packed with antioxidants.

4. Stop every 2 hours and exercise for at least ten minutes, do some squats or push ups, go outside and focus on some distant objects.

5. Take a daily multi vitamin and some fish oil capsules

6. Get 8 hours sleep every day, I even got into having a little nap if I stayed up late.

7. Exercise every day for at least 40 minutes.

8. Get into healthy snacks, cut up some raw vegetables and fruit and keep them next to you to munch on. Try some raw nuts and dates.

9. Have a work schedule, just because you work from home does not mean you should be a haphazard blogger.

10. Prioritize your tasks, answering your email or mucking around on Facebook should not be the first thing on your list, divide the tasks into smaller chunks, they become a lot easier this way.

Blogging can be detrimental to your health if you do not discipline yourself, the worst part of it is that if you let your body suffer, you will find that your thinking and your creative juices also tend to dry up.
Stay healthy while you blog and you will be a much better blogger.

I have joined various sites when I acquired my laptop a year ago, but did nothing further. Fear stopped me, I had to overcome this feeling of being inadequate and just get on with it. This can be a little daunting when you read about those internet millionaires, you know the ones, they claim to make X amount in 3 days and they can retire in a week! They are not necessarily the best ones to follow and learn from, they probably make money, but it will be your money if you get sucked in.

I blame it all on Tim Ferriss and hisThe 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, there are many others but somehow the idea of working for one morning a week and enjoying the rest of my time chilling out really appealed to me.
My start was so very timid, I set up an account with Blogger but then again did not go further, Squidoo followed. It took six month of serious nail biting until I set up my first lens on Squidoo. When you want to build your first lens there are so many ideas floating around, what are my interests? Which of those interests could make a lens that someone else wants to read?
It took a while but my very first lens is “Ten steps to develop your psychic intuition”,.I did not know anything about HTML, and I still don’t.
Since then I discovered Blogger and I haven’t looked back, Blogger is so much more user friendly even I could use it without any trouble. With Squidoo you need to add your own HTML to change fonts, add colored backgrounds, change picture size etc. Blogger does it all for you and the beauty is you can learn to tweak the templates and personalize them as you wish all from the user friendly dashboard.
If you are starting out as a blogger and you wish to monetize your blogs, try one of the many free courses available, the web is a giant community and there are a lot of people wanting to help out the newbies, also join one of the many forums and get immediate feedback on just about any difficulty you may encounter.

All in all, I am grateful to all those internet giants who are willing to help people like me for free. I am in the process of doing the 30 Day Challenge with Ed Dale again, I find that there is so much to take in that it is very easy to give it all up.

The trick is not to get discouraged, if Tim Ferriss can do it so can I.