The Mid-Blogging Crisis

via pinterest.com. click for photo credit

It feels a bit early in the lifespan of this blog to be sitting down for a “we need to have a talk” sort  of post. But I think we do. My reasons for blogging have changed drastically since I first began in 2009. They continue to change, which is the reason this blog’s adopted name lacks a certain…certainty. I swear it’s not pretension.

With individual bloggers and personal blogs gaining legitimacy in the online writing world and the writing world at large, there’s a wider pressure to be putting out polished, well-researched content that is concise, relevant, and entertaining to its readers. And why shouldn’t it be? If people are marketing their work and sharing it with an audience as large as the entire Internet, their work should be good. Better than good, even. Edited. Vetted by someone else. Edited again. But for the place I’m in with my writing – reacquainting myself with ‘the pen’ after a long, lonely hiatus, the blog feels too tight a box for my cramped up limbs.

What began as a sure pipeline to the writing mind has turned into something clogged by these pressures (mostly self-induced) and immobilizing. Part of that has to do with my own back and forth uncertainty over a theme which led me to adopt the hideously overzealous attitude and tone of other “life-improvement” bloggers. It’s not coincidental that I can barely recognize it as my own. Reading some of those blind rants, me rattling off vague ideas on vague pursuits, I can see how desperately I fed off the hope of someday, someway being fulfilled in my work. All of those Change-your-life-by-doing-what-you-love bloggers are dealing dangerous cards, placing high bets – and winning – on the ennui and discontent of the modern worker. It’s an easy path to profit, but a not entirely moral one. It’s taken me months to back away from that table, but now I comfortably am calling their bluff, and my own, on this form of reader degradation superficially masked as encouragement. The mentality that you’re not quite good enough, but almost, easily identified in women’s magazines, now perpetuated through those clever lifestyle blogs (even those run by respected ranks of writers) is not an idea I can subscribe to myself. So why would I expect anyone else to?

Now that I’ve picked up some discipline and consistency in my writing habits, offline, I feel less reliant on this blog to provide me those mechanisms. I still want to share the stories that provoke true inspiration, the good ideas and good organizations doing things of value, whether that’s social, personal, political, comedic or purely aesthetic. Finding and sharing these web gems is more than half of the fun of blogging for me, not to mention way less nauseating than a spew of tips and tricks for revamping your life.

So, if you’ve been able to sift through the heaping meta-mess of this post, thanks! If not, this part will sum it up: I’m going to be concentrating less on how “blog-ready” my posts are, “stop fetishizing output“, and just write! This may mean things will look a little funny around here, in an extra-limbs, two-headed kind of way. And I hope that’s ok with you.

End meta-blogging now.

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Tagged: goal-setting, maintaining focus, blogs, writing lessons

Posted in: Blogging Lessons, unconventional wisdom, The Writing Life