Where did my Hive mojo go?

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It's been a while since I've been properly active on Hive. I was on a roll in September, posting everyday. Then life happened and completely zapped my energy levels, and along with it my Hive mojo.

October and November pretty much sucked. If a photo could sum it all up, it would be this one:

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Having a meltdown, but life just kept piling more rubbish on top ...

I'd been sick on and off with an asthma flare up since late July and it caused a huge amount of extra stress, through both the impact on my work and daily life, and just the horribleness of being ill itself. Losing my Eddie dog at the end of September was the straw that broke the camel's back and I got even sicker. I missed so much work and it's been a frustrating time trying to get my lungs right again. I'm much better now, but still finding I have to take it easy when out walking or doing anything physical.

With all this my Hive goals got a little forgotten and dusty, and my posting frequency was zero. I just didn't have any energy or motivation to sit down and write.

It's time to refind my Hive mojo, revisit my goals, and see what can be salvaged.

How to get my Hive mojo back

Step 1 - Attend HiveFest for a healthy dose of motivation and inspiration

Totally did this and it worked. It was just what I needed. I feel motivated and inspired to jump back in.

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Step 2 - Review my goal to follow 200 new people by October 31st.

So, this didn't happen. As of today my count is at 95 new accounts followed, so roughly halfway there. It's taken a lot longer than expected to find accounts posting content I'm interested in, as I don't want to just follow anyone and fill my feed with content I won't read.

While I haven't hit my target yet, the new accounts I have followed have definitely livened my feed up.

Step 3 - Review my 1 Hive per day target goal

I had set myself a personal goal to try and make an average of 1 Hive (or HP) per day over the 30 days of September. Yeah, that's not exactly high but I thought it would be a good starting target as I had posts that were only hitting 0.10 HP and fairly low curation rewards as well.

I actually averaged 2.3 HP per post over the 30 days (if my dodgy calculations are correct), so I was pretty pleased with that. This doesn't take into account any HBD rewards and curation rewards, so they were a nice bonus.

Step 4 - Review my posting goal

The goal was to post every day in September and I hit that, with 30 daily posts published by the end of the month. Posting every day really helped to build a routine of sitting down at the computer every day to write. It took some time to find the right timing, this ended up being each night before bed.

I think the above chart also shows that I started getting into my stride in that 4th week and my posts were getting more votes.

Step 5 - Reset my goals

So I'm planning to do it all again over my summer break.

Follow 200 new people by 31st March. I'm extending this goal out to the end of March 2021. If I find and follow 1-2 new accounts each day I'll hit the remaining target of 105 easily.
Post every day until the 31st January. This will be a total of 42 days, starting from Monday this week. They say 21 days to build a habit, so that should be twice as long as I need to get back into the routine!
Average 5 Hive per day in post and curation rewards. Setting this one a bit higher this time, as I'm sure it's achievable.

Step 6 - Discover something nice!

I didn't realise I'd won some Hive SBI tokens in the November #HivePUD competition and only discovered them yesterday, so that was a really nice surprise! Thanks @traciyork for organising, and thanks @improv for donating the Hive SBI prize :-)