As the A to Z Challenge nears its finish, we'll all start thinking of what we've accomplished this past frantic month of blogging. Some people may have doubled their number of followers. Some will share the number of blogs they managed to visit each day or over the course of the Challenge. You may feel like you've done less or accomplished less than others.
Yardsticks are used for all kinds of things in the writing world. Certain writers' groups require that you've earned a set amount of money selling books before you can apply for membership. Others writers group have within them different levels of membership, published and unpublished, voting or associate members, and other divisions unique to their organization. The conferences and events for such groups may have different tracts for the various levels of membership.
It's human to compare ourselves or our achievements to others and it might motivate some people to strive harder. But for others it can be discouraging and frustrating. It is one of the reasons that's it's important to set personal goals. Those goals should be ones that are within your control and that you can measure. The only yardstick you should use is the one measuring your accomplishments against the goals you've set for yourself.
We all had reasons for being part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Did you network with others? Meet interesting people? Learn new things? Find you could follow a schedule of regular blogging? Whatever your goals were, don't measure them against others, only against what you wanted.
Do you design your own yardstick? (Or meter stick?) Do you have to remind yourself not compare yourself to others? Are you aware of a writers' group with different levels of membership or restrictions on who can join?
