Blaugust Prompts, Week 4

You know the drill: As provided in this post, here are week 4’s prompts:

• What tricks do you use to keep yourself motivated when something feels impossible?
• What are your blogging goals? Do you think participating in Blaugust is getting you closer to where you want be?
• What do you think you’ll get out of completing your Blaugust goals?
• What drives you to blog?
• Are you happy with your Blaugust so far? If so, why? If not, why not?
• How important is goal setting & reaching your goals to you overall?
• Did you read any posts during Blaugust (or before) that you found particularly inspirational? Share them!
• Group Project: What non-blog related achievement are you particularly proud of, and how did you stay motivated to complete it?

Motivation

I’m… generally not very motivated. I tend to enjoy passive activities. Or, at least, lower energy activities. That isn’t to say I’m a sedentary log. I enjoy riding my bike, golfing, taking walks, and spending time outdoors. But I also very much enjoy slow, lazy mornings, catching up on YouTube videos and drinking coffee on my couch.

I suppose that doesn’t really factor into motivation, but what does is that I often think a lot about things, but less often do I just do the thing. And almost all the time, “Just Do The Thing” is the solution to most of my hesitations. It’s easy for me to over-think or complicate ambitions, and I get so wrapped up in unnecessary distractions, that I don’t ever just “do the thing.”

Perfect example: live-streaming. Last post I mentioned how I’ve wanted to try streaming regularly for years. Why do I not? Because I get bogged down in needless details and complications, instead of just turning on the stream and playing something! It goes something like this:

“I don’t want to jump into a game mid play-through, so I’ll need to start a new play-through (1), and I’ll want to make sure they’re all recorded so I have a playlist of the play-through (2). Oh, but do I want to stream to Twitch? I’d rather not depend on The Bezos and instead stream to something like Peertube! (3) And if that’s the case, should I stream to an existing instance, or setup my own? (4) Maybe I should dual-stream it? (5) Can I do that from OBS on Linux? (6) Can I export from Peertube to YouTube? (7) Does that even make sense? (8)

And on and on. That’s 8 distractions in a single paragraph of needless complications. Self-hosting Peertube sounds awesome, but you know what it doesn’t do? Actually. Stream. A. Game. Just do the thing, Bill. Just do the thing.

How do I keep myself motivated? Poorly. It’s one of the biggest challenges I face daily. All things considered, I suppose that’s rather fortunate, but it bleeds into every part of my life. My lack of motivation extends beyond something inconsequential like live-streaming, and touches on actual work, dieting and exercise, home-ownership, personal projects, and more. And these are things which are well within my reach; all very possible. Asking how to keep motivated when something feels impossible seems an inappropriate question for me to approach at this time.

Blogging Motivation

What about scoped to blogging? My goals for this Blaugust, the first I’ve learned of let alone “participated” in, were relatively simple: post once a week. Assuming I post next week, I will have accomplished this goal. I also set for myself some secondary goals, to leverage Blaugust to write some posts about topics that I’m interested in, and also that I know will benefit from me writing about them. TMUX was the poster-child of this, and I do have a TMUX post, and I have made progress learning about TMUX and applying it to my setup, but that TMUX post ain’t done yet, and that’s basically because other things have taken precedence. That being said, another hope was that blogging more would show me that blogging doesn’t have to be a challenging thing to do, and I do think I’ve taken that lesson to heart. It’s easy for me to just spin up a draft, start writing, and push it to my forge for later. The challenge is remembering it later.

As for what drives me to blog, I can’t really point to anything specifically. I don’t think I even expect others to read these posts. I guess, I see it as taking advantage of this Internet Real Estate that is my domain, to post some thoughts or discoveries or just rant a bit. I do have this romanticized notion of getting more involved in the Indie Web or Small/Smol Web, and building some good relationships with other random Internet people, and maybe some day that will materialize, but I can’t say I expect that to happen from this blog.

All-in-all, I’m happy with this Blaugust experience. I posted some stuff, got some project ideas, and overall feel that I’ve grown more comfortable with this little tech stack of mine.

Goals

Oh, goals. I’m bad with goals. Like motivation, goals don’t seem to hold much sway over my focus. I’ve set many a goal, but I’ve just as quickly forgotten about those goals, or been drawn to other ambitions before those goals. There are many markers in my graveyard of forgotten and forsaken goals. Heck, I started this year with two “yearly” goals: get back to a healthier lifestyle, lose some weight, and start tracking all that; and get a better grasp on my finances, and start tracking them. I have done… neither. It’s August, so I suppose there’s still time.

Completing my basic Blaugust goal (one post a week) will feel nice, but likely not have any lasting impressions.

Group Project: Non-Blog Cheevos

Thinking back on my life, there are two significant achievements I feel proud of: the first is losing over 100 pounds of weight, and the second is taking singing lessons. The weight-loss motivation was 70-30, others-to-personal. I had great gym buddies and a wonderful personal trainer who all helped keep me on-track, both with exercise and diet, and there was also a girl. Personally, once I started seeing my weight drop in a pretty consistent fashion, it felt more and more possible for me to actually achieve my goals, and that loop helped a lot. I felt better, I looked better, and that feedback kept me focused.

Singing lessons is my poster child for “Just Do The Thing.” I mentioned to some friends I’ve always wanted to get more confidence singing. One of them said I should take lessons. That afternoon, I looked up local coaches, and signed up with one. Working with that coach was incredibly rewarding, and I made some great contacts through the entire experience. Unfortunately, my coach left because she’s awesome and got accepted to a very prestigious school, and so singing lessons have stalled, but I feel much more confident singing in front of others now. Which is nice. Staying motivated here was also partially motivated by others (my coach, those connections, support from friends and family) and by myself (building that confidence, hearing compliments and encouragement, having fun).

An Addendum on Optimism and Hope

I am, despite my best attempts, relentlessly optimistic and hopeful. This often translates into feelings of “the indomitable human spirit,” for however short they may manifest, and I can always somehow dig deep enough to find motivation. For example, I’ve recently been going through job interviews and also trying to establish more clients for my own personal business. With regards to the former, the thought of this job opportunity not working out fills me with an overwhelming amount of defeat. With regards to the later, the thought of seeking out more clients to find more work feels exhausting. Yet, in both cases, I have felt myself rally to overcome these feelings. Despite this seemingly overwhelming amount of suck, I still feel that power metal-inspired relentless call to glory. I’ve listened to too much awesome music, read too many heroic tales, and played too many absurd video games to ever have the option to give up. I am deliriously inspired by heroism, in all forms, and whenever an opportunity arises that I can channel that inspiration, whether consciously or not, I eagerly do so. Motivation is hard for me to find, but never out of reach. Sometimes, I just need to listen to some DragonForce to find it.

This is a post in the 2026 Blaugust Series. You can find more details here. If I get my act together, I’ll include a link to an index, or a list of other posts related to Blaugust 2026 right here. Thanks for reading this ramble. Be good, do good, stay hydrated, go Bills.