This isn't my first attempt at a blog and it's not my first attempt at a lengthly challenge either. After completing my 12 months alcohol ban I wanted to try another year-long experiment. My previous attempt at a personal blog started when my daughter was born and focused on being a first-time dad and its highs and lows but I got 17 weeks in and stopped. I never released the blog as it became more of a journal/ therapy for dealing with such a big change. Looking back on those final blogs/journals, they became short and uninteresting which made them uninteresting to me. I guess I got what I wanted out of the exercise so I stopped.

So how is this different? Well, the short answer is I don’t know. I might get 17 weeks into this blog and drop the ball again but I won’t know until I try.

For those who don’t know me my name is Joel Beer, I’m a web developer, homeowner, dog owner, self-improvement fanatic, creator - whatever that means, son, brother, boyfriend & dad.

So why now? Why start a 52-week experiment in the middle of the year? Well, there are 3 main reasons;

• For my mental health. I have found over the past few weeks that things have been building up and I thought this would be a good outlet.
• Building the right habits, by sitting myself down to write these blogs week in, week out I will need to find the right habits to build into my life for the next 12 months and hope they stick.
• To have a place to nerd out, there are so many different things that I am into such as baking, gaming, learning, new tech; I could go on. I want this blog to be a place where I can share those interests and nerd out over different things.

This first blog post simply introducing myself was always going to be a bit on the smaller side. So for that reason, I am going to pad the blog out a bit with an image of my dog Bailey because everyone loves a photo of a happy dog.
So until next time, I hoped I have piqued your interest enough to come back for the next blog post. Please bear with me as I find my writing style and voice and I hope you have a great week.