A flow chart my daughter made for me after she proofread an article I wrote for SwimSwam.

Shout out to Ally Bean of The Spectacled Bean for her post yesterday. It inspired me to write about where we get our blog ideas, plus reminded me of the flow chart above that I used in an article called “Does Your Child Want to Swim in College” for SwimSwam. Ally had a flow chart in her post called “Is it a penguin?”

I used to write a weekly sports parenting column for SwimSwam. I came up with an idea every week for five years from my personal experiences, parenting mistakes, plus observing other parents with their kids on the pool deck. I’d get ideas from coaches and interview Olympians and coaches. I even got emails from parents around the world asking me for advice, which started a Dear Abby-type column called “Ask Swim Mom.” I began swimming myself and would ask my coach for ideas while I was hanging onto the wall. I’d ask my daughter to read my columns before turning them in and she had great advice (like adding her flow chart).

Swimming is a sport that lasts 50 weeks a year with practice six days a week, with a couple two-a-day practices thrown in per week. You can imagine how obsessed and focused swimming families can become. My goal with my column was to let kids be kids and own their own sport. In other words, parents need to back off.

Now, that my kids have left the nest, I no longer have the desire to write about swimming or parenting. I began my blog writing financial advice for women. I realized within a few weeks that nobody wanted to read that. Then I moved on to swimming, parenting and things that were going on in my day-to-day life. I’m still writing about my daily life, but life has slowed down. Sometimes my posts are photos of birds from my Bird Buddy or sunrises and sunsets.

Where do you get your ideas for blogging?

How has your blog evolved through the years?