You may not be able to tell, but I miss writing my blog. Several times a week I have ideas for posts, but they just don’t get written. About a week a go I had two revelations about why I seem to have this block and I wanted to share them.
Caught up in ‘blogging’
I started writing this blog to keep a record of things I don’t write in my journal, such as organisation techniques and working towards goals, while at the same time practising my writing skills. I also hoped that people would share ideas and comments, and I’ve been delighted that people have been so helpful as I’ve learnt a lot from comments, for instance when I was wondering what to buy for our new baby.
However 2 things happened that have slowed me down:
- I started reading blogs about blogging and got caught up in all the things I ‘should’ be doing
- I wanted a new theme as my current one is the one I used when I started my blog 3 years ago. I’m not a coder but have worked on personalising a theme, however because of 1 I’ve been trying to introduce additional features such as slick advertising to ‘make money’. This explains why I’ve been working on this theme for over a year!
Revelation: I didn’t start this blog to make money and I’ve been pulled in a direction that is a BIG distraction. Of course I don’t mind making money if it happens, but it is not my focus.
Actions: Focus on content and finish a simple version of my theme.
Stuck on the process
Although I love processes, I have not developed any for writing posts. For instance I have a follow up post to Ask advice: How to keep a project daily log that I’ve been writing since October that is still in draft. I think the main reason is I’ve taken photographs to use as examples and it has taken months to download, edit and upload them to the site.
Revelation: I am not an efficient blogger
Actions: Pay attention to my blogging processes to identify and deal with my bottle necks and pick up good habits from other bloggers e.g. activity batching
So from now I’m going to concentrate on what is important to me, the writing, while being realistic that I’m not going to get back up to 3 posts a week overnight. As always I would be very interested in any advice you have about how you deal with blogging distractions and publishing good posts efficiently.
