1. Dream about writing
2. Write beginnings of articles and books in your mind
3. Dream more about writing
4. Write copious amounts in your journal
5. Realize that blogging is a thing
6. Read other people’s blogs and think “I want to blog”
7. Consider starting a blog
8. Talk to daughter about starting a blog
9. Listen to daughter’s advice about said blog
10. Start a blog on New Year’s Day
11. Write your first blog and hit “Publish”
12. Get a phone call from your mom who read your first blog
13. Write your second blog and hit “Publish”
14. Realize that there is something called “stats” that will tell you how many people have read your blog
15. Write your third blog and see that two people have read it: Your mom and your husband
16. Blog and realize your mom, your husband, and a lot of old friends from Pakistan have read your blog
17. Blog and realize your mom, your husband, your friends from Pakistan and a whole lot of strangers have read your blog
18. Get terrified
19. Think that you’re supposed to blog about everything that happens everywhere
20. Get exhausted at pretending you have a voice and knowledge about everything everywhere
21. Get comments and emails from strangers who, amazingly, really like your writing
22. Write a blog that gets a lot of response from a group you love
23. Write, Write, Write and realize that even when people don’t read it, you really love to write
24. Settle into a happy little corner of the big, wide, interwebz
25. Write a blog that goes viral (it was bound to happen considering the sheer volume you write) and get mad because you know that other things you have written are better, but this one was the one that went BAM!
26. Go to conference and have a stranger recognize you
27. Write a book from your blog posts
28. Go to another conference and watch the speaker click to a slide with a quote from YOUR BOOK (whisper to all the strangers around you “That’s me!”)
29. Continually struggle with envy when others seem to have a bigger platform
30. Confess said envy and take a break from blogging
31. Go back to blogging refreshed and realizing that you are developing your own style and voice
32. Realize that your blog will never send you rejection letters, so you should probably branch out to other magazines in order to grow as a writer
33. Branch out and get a rejection email.
34. Publish the rejected blog post on your own blog
35. Decide that you are a terrible writer and no one should be reading you anyway because you’re a sheer waste of time
36. Get an email that says “I never comment, but I love your writing!”
37. Decide maybe you’re still a terrible writer, but someone loves you, and if even one person loves you – then maybe it’s worth it.
38. Branch out again and send out more articles to magazines and journals
39. Get articles accepted and work with editor that doesn’t know you or your writing
40. Be humbled as you write and rewrite sentences and paragraphs
41. See your work published outside of your own blog
42. Proudly send out more articles
43. Get email saying “You are a solid writer, but we won’t be using your article”
44. Scream with rage “I DO NOT WANT TO BE A SOLID WRITER. I WANT TO BE AN EXCELLENT WRITER”
45. Cry
46. Pray
47. Realize that your missing ingredient is generosity
48. Seek to be generous with your writing, your platform, and your praise and affirmation of other writers
49. Be humbled
50. Continue writing because the heart of all of this is that you absolutely love putting letters into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into thoughts and ideas. YOU LOVE IT – and no one can ever take that away from you. No one. Ever. 

PS – Oh, and also realize that when you first started blogging you linked everything to Wikipedia, and only found out about when your daughter said to you one day “Mom, why do you link everything to Wikipedia?”  So you lie and said “I don’t” and then secretly late at night you go through 120 blog posts and take out all the Wikipedia links…..