It could be. I’ve been playing a lot of it. But, it isn’t.
It’s about finding the motivation to blog, which, from what I gather, is this week’s theme.
When blogging was at its biggest, blogging meant something. So many people that I followed at the time turned their blogs into real jobs. I turned my blog into two real jobs — one at an insurance company (where I still work), and a short gig blogging with Massively. I met a lot of really good friends, including my boyfriend, blogging.
Even at that point of what I considered great success, my posts had no more than 150 visits per day. And I sweat blood over those posts. They’d take me hours. I’d do illustrations, do extensive research, use special fonts. I had a photography setup on my dining room table. My free time was spent blogging. And I had a bunch of blogs. I travelled the Northeast, Virginia and Ohio snapping pictures of cool bridges. I had a blog about writing an AI to solve the Shapeshifter puzzle in Neopets. I had a blog that I just used to talk about whatever was on my mind that day.
And then, I just. Stopped.
I stopped so hard that I couldn’t even be bothered to renew my blog’s hosting or domain name, and so, West Karana died (though of course I had backups. I’m a professional software engineer. I back shit up.)
I got interested in blogging again a year and a half ago, during the pandemic, when I started getting excited about “Blapril”, and then again in last year’s “Blaugust”. That kept me going until December, or so, when I mostly stopped. I started again just before this “Blaugust” began, but I don’t expect I’ll continue blogging afterward.
Maybe I will.
I read about half the posts my fellow Blaugusters write. There’s some astonishingly good writers among them, and if anything, I’d rather celebrate their voices than inflict the world with mine.
I don’t feel I really add any interesting views to the news of the day, and so I stay out of it. People aren’t interested in pictures of my family playing board games. I hardly play MMOs any more. I do stream on Twitch and publish highlights to YouTube, but I don’t do the on camera or voice stuff because I really can’t be bothered to do it. It would be an astounding amount of work to just be able to say I tried.
I play games to relax, and have fun. Writing really isn’t relaxing or fun in and of itself. I do like chatting with people about stuff. I like Twitter, I guess. Google Plus was just so good for me. It was like longform Twitter. No pressure. Of course, Google would have to kill it.
But in the end, blogging is just something to do instead of doing something fun.
You should play Mini Rogue. It’s a lot of fun. I got the Old Gods expansion and spent the time while cooking dinner playing with a new character, “Bones”. He starts with a curse and can use it to gain a crude sort of power, now and then. Next time, I’m playing the Priestess.
“Writing really isn鈥檛 relaxing or fun in and of itself. ”
I think this ought to be the key takeaway from the whole “Staying motivated” week. It just about sums up why I have no problems posting every day when I’m not working, while other people find it a chore and a burden. I’d struggle to think of anything I find more relaxing or more fun than writing blog posts. It’s literally the thing I want to do most, most days, and has been for many years.
I’ve written all my life but of all the forms I’ve tried I find shortish articles or essays (500-2000 words) the easiest and most enjoyable. I started writing this stuff for fanzines in the late 70s and carried on all through the 80s into the mid 90s in various kinds of zines. Ifell out of doing that and spent a decade just firing out comments and forum posts (like this) tht vanished into nowhere, which worked in the moment but didn’t lead to much of a legacy.
Finally I settled on blogging, which ended up being a perfect match. It’s infinitely extendable or retractable, entirely flexible. I can write about anything, when I want, how i want. It’s relaxing and fun while i do it, then relaxing and fun when I read it. I read most of my own posts two or three times after I publish, just for the pelasure of reading them. I would certainly be doing this if the internet died and the only place the posts could be seen was on my screen but the knowledge that other people can read the stuff I write adds an extra buzz and when people comment it makes the whole thing feel purposeful in an exterior fashion that adds a lot of power to the whole process.
If I felt like so many bloggers I read, who seem to find the whole thing a struggle, a burden, a chore, an imposition, a duty, I certainly wouldn’t be doing it. It’s meant to be fun, isn’t it? That’s the whole point or I thought so.
I’ve been reading your stuff for years. I’d be very sorry to see you stop (again). I enjoy just about ever post you put up (especially the bridges ones – I miss those) but if you aren’t finding it fun then yes, you should at least take a break until you can enjoy it once more. For its own sake, too, not for what it might become or bring.
I definitely envy your mastery of the form 馃檪
I should mention that I like “having written”. Pretty much the same way I feel about exercise. And, I do love when I see people are reading my posts. I don’t decide to stop blogging, it just stops happening because I am spending that time doing something else.
What I should really do is try to find my “niche”, the one thing on which I can focus. I’d like that to be board games, to be honest, but I get the very least traction on those kinds of posts.
Imma third that. Bhagpuss’ comments are better than most blog posts out there XD
Same boat. I loved to blog back when it was THE persistent method of communication among like-minded people. It’s a forum where the blogger got to hog the stage, thrown down his or her or their own thoughts, and then enjoyed the discussion that they initiated. Then video showed up and no one wanted to read any more (“this could have been a blog post” is going to be chiseled on my gravestone, pending my wife’s approval). Now we have Twitter, or whatever other short-form social media communication platform folks are using.
On the occasion when I’ve “doomblogged” I’ve A) felt bad about it later and B) realized that if there was any comment at all, it was like-for-like: argumentative, and just a bad vibe. It’s amazing how few posts I have in me these days, following that pattern.
But when I do write, I do it because — as my sharing icons at the foot of each page echo — “I have to tell someone”. Anyone. I don’t know if anyone will come, but I feel so strongly about what I’m posting that I don’t want to keep the opportunity from others by just shrugging and skipping it which, as I’m sure all bloggers know, is just WAY easier than spending the time to write only to find that no one cares.
So I write when _I_ care. It’s not often, and lately it’s not been on topics that the bulk of my social circles are interested in (React, VFX, etc), but I do it because I _do_ enjoy writing, and I _do_ occasionally feel so amped up about a success or knowledge or experience that I “have to tell someone”.
And, I love reading what you write. With your 3D modeling and React work, you’re doing the sort of stuff I’d probably do a lot more of if I had the motivation. And I love reading your TTRPG adventures, too 馃檪
But yeah, it was easier back when everyone was blogging, and it felt like a real community. Blaugust helps get everyone back to the keyboards, but any community it builds appears to be on Twitch and YouTube.
I stopped bridge hunting as my son moved home and my boyfriend moved in, and neither of them are at all interested in bridges and don’t want to be hauled out all over the place to look at them.
Oh man, I remember the bridge posts! In fact the first time we drove down to NC to scope the place out I think I took a pic of some unusual bridge we crossed and shared it on Twitter cuz I thought “Tipa would like this bridge.”
Blaugust has been interesting for me. For some reason I thought “getting back on the horse” would make things easier and the words would just flow. That hasn’t really happened though. Well I mean, I can grind out posts to meet the daily quota but a lot of them haven’t been all that interesting to me, so I assume they aren’t interesting to anyone else either.
And since I installed this Jetpack plugin my traffic numbers are visible. This is something I never tracked before. Now that I do, I see my numbers are lousy and dropping.
My end take away is if I keep doing this, it’s going to be basically my own online journal and if someone reads the posts, cool, but I won’t expect anyone too.
Oddly I think if I were a morning person I’d be better at this. Get up, write a post, go to work. Because when I get out of work my brain is tired and sitting back down at the computer to write a blog post just feels like going back to work and it eats into the time I have to do the things I really want to do. The only reason I’ve gotten as far as I have in Blaugust is that work has been weirdly quiet (to the point where I’m starting to think I’m going to get laid off) which means I’ve been roughing out posts during work hours, which is not something my schedule usually allows for.
“My end take away is if I keep doing this, it鈥檚 going to be basically my own online journal and if someone reads the posts, cool, but I won鈥檛 expect anyone too.” <– this is basically my state of being right now.
@Tipa, you're an inspiration and your passion has always been super infectious. I love to read what you write. So there's that at least. 馃檪