5 Things I Like About Looking Back on the First Year of This Blog

Oct 9

When I posted my first blog here one year ago, I was already thinking ahead to this moment of reflection. I wrote in my journal on 10/18/23, “This [blog] will become something that will tell a story about how gratitude changed my life over time, and people will read it and some of them will change their lives, and then it will change my life even more.”

I originally committed to writing once a week for several reasons:

It was October, three months after I had left my previous job, and while I was still in recovery from the demands of a corporate work schedule, I recognized that I needed a regular activity to commit to Kind & Funny.
I wanted to write more and to practice writing, and this seemed like a way to just go for it.
I was pretty grumpy and burned out, and I knew that I needed to do a lot more looking on the bright side to work through those feelings because I didn’t want to be grumpy and burned out anymore.

So here I am, writing blog #52, proud of myself for keeping up this weekly commitment, and a little bit in awe of all that happened this past year.

In re-reading the previous 51 blogs it was easy to identify a few main topics that I kept returning to, and so I’ve grouped them that way below, but the main result of writing about 276 specific things that I liked was that I ended up writing mostly about what I learned. Now, as I consider giving myself a short break before starting Season 2 of the blog, I am confident that next season will move from “Something I like …” to “Something I learned …”

In the meantime, here are 5 things I like about looking back on the past year of blogging, plus an easy listing of each post:

1. I did more stuff, including self-reflection

This past year saw a profound shift in my life from being an employee to being a partner at Kind & Funny that I think can be best characterized as moving from primarily extrinsic motivation (doing something to meet “an external goal, garnering praise and approval, winning a competition, or receiving an award or payment”) to primarily intrinsic motivation (doing something “for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence”).

That sounds lovely, but I’ll be honest—there were a lot of times when motivating myself was difficult without a clear and pressing reason at hand, whether that be an urgent email or a meeting or a paycheck. In the midst of those times when I was struggling with motivation, it was nice to have a regular deadline and a weekly need for content.

As the year went on I was able to develop my motivation muscles and build a routine while still embracing the freedom, flexibility, and spontaneity that comes from being more in control of my life and my schedule. One specific way of doing that was remembering that if I have time on my hands, there are always three free ways I can spend it:

I can read a book from the library (I’ve read .88 books per week this year, an all-time high)
I can take a walk (I do this often, frequently now to look for birds like they are Pokemon)
I can sit and think (Kel and I made a “meditation station” under our staircase where we can do this)

After doing stuff and thinking about it and documenting it on a weekly basis during this momentous year, there’s evidence of my personal journey and growth, and I’ll be forever grateful for that. Here are some blogs about me doing things or reflecting on things:

2. I celebrated my new job

Kelly and I got to do a whole lot of cool things and work with a whole lot of cool people this past year, and celebrating that helped me adjust to the world of being a self-employed business owner while rehabbing the complicated feelings I had about work that led me to make a career change.

These posts allowed me to shed some light on why we do things the way we do, and to share some insights into the projects that we make, which was super fun. I also made a point of taking time after finishing projects to celebrate them, which I don’t think is ever really done enough.

Here are some of the posts talking about how we work, and appreciating many of the projects we did:

3. I showed gratitude to people, and they were in turn grateful

I think people are pretty awesome, and a lot of what I wrote about this year were awesome people doing things that I thought were cool. Sometimes that was a person I knew, and sometimes it was a person I didn’t.

When I wrote something nice about a person I knew, I would send it to them so that they would see that nice thing and feel good. Believe it or not, sending personal compliments can feel a bit scary, but every single time the person received it with grace and excitement.

Once, a professional person I didn’t know sent me an email thanking me for what I wrote about their work. It was a clear reminder that being nice can catch on—one of Kelly’s core beliefs and part of her original motivation for starting Kind & Funny—and it also made me like that person way more, which I didn’t think was possible.

I think recognizing the power of saying nice things specifically has led to me being a little more generous with compliments, a little more willing to reach out to people, and a lot more willing to look on the bright side of things.

Here are a some posts about awesome people doing cool things:

And here’s a subset appreciating things local to Denver and our neighborhood:

4. I spent a year at the movies

Kelly has several standing calls on Mondays, so it’s best if I get out of the house for a bit to give her space for those. I started going to the movies for this purpose, and it turns out that going to the movies alone is my creative happy place. Thus “Movie Monday” was born, where pretty much every week I see a movie and bring a notebook to see what inspiration hits.

This blog began with my reflections on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, and this past Monday I saw The Wild Robot, which tells us that “sometimes to survive, we must become more than we were programmed to be.” I’ve personally done a lot of reprogramming this year, and a lot of it happened in a heated recliner at the AMC theater.

5. I practiced writing (and a lot of other creativity)

Saying that I wanted to write more also meant that I wanted to share my writing more, to be willing to put it out there and accept feedback, criticism, indifference, praise, and anything else.

I did not realize that opening that door would also mean that I’d end up making and sharing visual art, or giving people poems about them for my birthday, or competing in multiple short-story competitions.

I’m very glad all of that happened, and I attribute it to stating a goal, making a small weekly commitment to generate momentum toward that goal, and being open to going wherever that momentum took me.

In addition to writing all of these posts, sometimes I wrote posts about other things I wrote, or other things I made. You can find those here:

Having said all of that, I’d also like to say a very special thank you to my partner in creativity, Kelly, who is a constant inspiration on how to follow what inspires you by going after it with a club. This blog, and the life that I have that is reflected in it, does not exist without all the work that Kelly has done to create and build the Kind & Funny Brand Shop, and her drive to make it a place that can allow both of us to follow our dreams. I love you, and I am so very grateful to be your sidekick in this life.

Read anything on this page you want to talk more about? jed@kindandfunny.com.

Jed Heneberry