One of the best parts about working for WooThemes is that everyone is so excited and passionate about everything they do. We're all constantly throwing new ideas out there and often you just run with them and see what happens. No red tape. JFDI.

My colleague Daniel Espinoza is really passionate about blogging. He likes it so much and finds it so rewarding that he blogs on 4 different sites at the moment. In addition to encouraging us during our weekly meetings, in the company chat, and on twitter (just press the publish button!) he just set up the Blogging for Benjamin competition!

What is this competition?

The heart of the competition is all about getting in the habit of blogging daily. Here's the official description:

This is a friendly competition to enliven the spirit of blogging! Are you the next prolific WordPress writer? Are you the next Chris Lema, Tom McFarlin, Darren Rowse or Brian Krogsgard? Well now is the time to show your stuff! The competition is easy: Write blog posts during the month of December and the top three ninjas with the most blog posts will win!

You're Just Going to Publish Shit Aren't You?

I certainly hope not! That's obviously not the point of the competition. The point is to get in the habit of writing daily. The advantage to blogging consistently is that instead of worrying about what people are going to say and stalling you just press the publish button. And more often than not you'll release quality content.

Writing is like any other skill and to improve a skill you have to practice it. By forcing myself to write every day I expect to do two things.

1. Practice writing. Just the process of getting thoughts out of my head and onto a medium can take a while. Sometimes I completely scrap what I'm writing and start over. I hope that with practice I'll get much better at interpreting and writing down my thoughts.
2. Get over the fear of being criticized harshly. I expect a little criticism in each of my blog posts. But the dozens of unpublished draft posts tells me that I can do a great deal better at this. Write down a thought and share it – even if it is an incomplete thought or solution. Publishing something is better than nothing so I hope to learn to publish what I have.

Okay So What Can I Expect?

You can expect me to blog once a day. That's right once a day – weekday or weekend. I'm pretty good with short term goals like this; I don't think anyone on the WooTeam knows this but when I first started yoga two years ago I took part in the 30 day challenge and I went to yoga everyday every. single. day. that month to win the challenge. It didn't matter if it was on the weekend, over my lunch break, or a 6am, I made is every single day and I plan to put the same level of commitment into this challenge as well.

There are 31 days in December and this is day 1. That means there's 30 posts to go. Not bad when I think about it that way. 🙂