Let’s pretend for a little bit that this post is about blogging. Then we’ll see what else we can learn from it.
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Falling Down
Blogging is hard, damn it. You want to blog consistently. You want to deliver interesting content on a regular basis and develop a community and a following. You want to pop up in people’s feed with fresh cool stuff and get those delicious upvotes. And you don’t want to be one of those bloggers who starts a blog with all kinds of great intentions only to have a major brain fart and go on hiatus, or stop all together.
“What was my mission again? Why did I want to do this? Does it matter?”
There are a lot of reasons bloggers fall down.
Sometimes life happens. An aging parent’s or grandparent’s health takes a turn for the worse. You get pneumonia. One of your kids has trouble at school. Your sister gets married. You decide to put an addition on the house. You move across the country. You have marital trouble and/or get divorced. You have chronic migraines and you get a really awful series of them all in one week. You have chronic health problems and sometimes it’s hard to do anything at all. You take on a new job. Someone hacks your computer or your Steemit account, or steals your identity, and you have to spend time fixing that. (By the way, every one of these has happened to me or someone I care about in recent memory.)
I defy you to face any of these life curve balls and remain totally consistent with your blogging.
It’s a rare blogger on Steemit, or any platform, that doesn’t fall down sometimes. That’s my humble opinion. The things that get in the way don’t even have to be the big things. Last week, for instance, I got really busy at work and with social events and volunteering and my kids’ stuff. I managed to keep all my little pots simmering, including meeting my Write Club deadlines and helping out a bit in the editing queue at The Writers’ Block, but after publishing a short story on Sunday, I went on hiatus Monday through Saturday.
Not only did my writing and posting dry up, but so did most of the upvoting/commenting support I give to all of my wonderful Steemit friends. Each day seemed like eons. I felt like I had a little gremlin sitting on my shoulder, gnashing its teeth and telling me what a loser of a blogger I am. Has this happened to you?
Getting back up
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One of the toughest things about falling down is the getting back up part. You scratch your head. You ask, “Now where was I?” Maybe you look through your older posts for inspiration. Perhaps you wonder if you just weren’t cut out for this. It may even occur to you that you would have better life balance and a lot less angst if you just gave it up.
But, no. You’re not a quitter. So you get back up and get going again. But boy, does it ever feel like that rock you were pushing up the hill rolled part way back down!
For my part, times like this make me realize I need a better strategy. For example, here are the blogging strategies I’m thinking of:
- I want to set up a blogging schedule so that I have specific things planned. It probably won’t be a daily blog regimen. (I did that for the month of January, and it was a wonderful exercise, but wow it was exhausting. You can read the summary post on how I did it and the lessons learned, if it interests you.) I’d like to take the best part of that effort, which was the strategy and regimen, and carry that forward in a sustainable way.
- I would like to run a periodic contest. My thought is that these will be small, fun, not too challenging, and geared toward helping other bloggers.
- Also, I want to do a periodic contest specifically for charity. For example, I am planning an upcoming contest to benefit @tarc.
- I had a lot of fun writing a story based on the game Clue and giving people something to look for in the post. (You can read that post here.) I offered 1 SBD to the person who figured something out, and ended up splitting it between two people who were neck-and-neck. I may write more stories that give people a reason to read and look for something specific in a story.
- One of my very favorite things to do is to write very short flash fiction stories. I have written a series of 50-word short stories, for example, and I just love them. I’m not much for writing poetry, so I think of these as my poems. I spend time perfecting them. I’d like to write at least one per week. (Here’s one example, called “Balloon Invasion”.)
- I write a series of workshop posts about fiction writing. I’d like to write one of these per month. They really help me to think about all the mechanical and creative aspects of fiction writing as I put together tips and ideas for other writers. (Here’s one example, about accepting criticism on your writing.)
- Out of the many daily blogging prompts and color challenges, the one I have latched onto is #BeachWednesday. I love the beach, and have a lifetime of beach pictures to fuel posts. (Here’s a BeachWednesday post I did as a fiction piece, just for fun.)
- Finally, I plan to look at using the SteemAuto tool. I’d like to get several posts written on the weekends and ready for the work week when I often feel too busy to post anything.
What are your strategies? How do you approach blogging so that it continues to inspire you? How do you make sure that if you fall down you can get back up?
Why this post isn’t just about blogging
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Blogging with purpose is kind of a metaphor for anything in life that takes commitment, don’t you think? Everything we do with passion takes motivation and drive. And anything really worth pursuing requires that we overcome hurdles, deal with all the crap life flings our way, and find a way to keep going, in spite of how tough it is. And sometimes, you fall down and have to get back up. For those things that really matter, I think it’s important to develop strategies for the tough times, and for getting going again.
This past week, not only did life get in the way, but I found myself disheartened by the things that trouble many of us on Steemit — upvotes on shit posts, hardworking bloggers getting very little visibility, people who game the system, and the fighting and flagging and all the crap. My friend @negativer wrote a post about all of that yucky stuff and I confided in a comment that it was getting to me and I had considered quitting.
But then I didn’t. I got back up. I found my motivation again. And I decided to start putting together the blogging strategy I shared above. I really think it will help when the going gets tough.
Thanks for reading! I wish you the best in your blogging journey, and hope you always find a way to get back up and get going again when you fall down.
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