For seventeen months outstretched over 2014 and 2015, I wrote for my blog that I called Cheating College. I gave it this slogan: lifelong learning without lifelong debt.

Cheating College was a way for me to chronical my alternative education pursuits and to dispel advice I learned while on my journey. It was also a great way for me to build the habit of writing regularly and creating content with the intent to be read by a specific audience.

It empowered me to figure things out for people, to study problems and present solutions, and to make myself of value to others.

During that time, I wrote over 30 articles, totaling over 54,000 words, and made over thirty custom graphics/ illustrations.

I shut the blog down when I hit a number of brick walls in my career and family lives (which I will share once the emotions aren’t so raw…) When I shut down the blog, at first it felt like I had removed a part of myself from existence, the beacon that had been letting the world know “I am here, and this is what I do” had been extinguished…

In the uncomfortable darkness, I eventually learned more about myself and how I want to start again: better, stronger, wiser.

Here’s a list of what I learned from the entire blogging experience, and how I will do things differently this time around.

1. Intention

I had started Cheating College with the intention to make it profitable. When I first started publishing posts, I was convinced I’d be making money within six months, and that before I knew it, I would be kicking back, reaping the rewards… Ha!

Profitability is not my goal this time. This time, there is no endgame.

My goal with this new blog is simply to share my thoughts, because…

2. I may have stopped blogging, but I’ve never stopped writing.

I’m always writing, journaling, researching: asking questions and drawing conclusions.

I’ve amassed quite a bit of work, which I’m starting to feel like a guilty hoarder for keeping it all to myself. Who am I not to share what others could benefit from? Moreover, who am I not to share when the potential feedback, counter-arguments, and opportunities that could result stand to make me a better person?

I can’t stop writing if I tried, so I might as well start sharing!

3. Any topic is fair game.

Cheating College was a great forum for me to teach myself how to create content that addressed specific concerns and desires for a niche audience. It taught me how to write, but always with a clear purpose guiding my words.

This time I don’t feel the need for such a restrictive compass. I’m not pigeon-holing myself to talk about only education and career topics, but instead opening myself up to dive into any topic I feel the need to. This is really liberating… like—standing on the edge of a boat, arms wide open, yelling “I’m king of the world!” kind of liberating…

This opens the floodgates for me to share about something so vital to my existence that I wasn’t able to before: my art. My obsession with visual communication, and my journey in its skill acquisition.

Which brings me to…

4. Investing more time in making higher quality content.

Blogging the first time around, I let the rules of social media dictate what content I made. I consistently aimed for one blog post a week, and always felt terrible when my output fell short. I often aimed to post the recommended frequency on Facebook, Twitter, etc…

This typically resulted in a post 2,000 words long, with a simple custom illustration or two.

If I never hit the brakes on that production pipeline, I never would’ve realized my newfound desire to… animate my ideas.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what about MOVING pictures? What about 24 pictures per second? ;)

Now free from the “must post weekly mindset,” I’m building on my foundation of visual communication. I have a pipeline of personal projects and animations that will each take months, years even, to see to completion. And here is where I’ll share them.

5. Laser-focus

A lot of my old posts were actually more like exercises in “let’s find out ALL the things I can say about x.” Most of the articles actually ended up being three-posts-in-one.

This happens to me a lot, even in other mediums, like speech-writing: I embark on one idea, yet the content for three spurt out like the birth of the mythical multi-headed Hydra.

This is a common problem, the problem of trying to say too much at once, which inevitably leads to nothing being said at all.

No more three-for-ones resulting in massively long posts that scare away even the most dedicated reader: this time I will be more liberal with laying down the axe. Each post will have a clear purpose from beginning to end, one head and one tail—these are messages, not conjoined siblings!

Conclusion

Who I am today has so much to do with the work I did in my first attempt at blogging. Cheating College may be referred to in past tense (I’ll be putting up its posts in an archive), but I’m thrilled that my devotion to writing and sharing is not.

I’m declaring this my new beacon.