How do you find the motivation to keep going and have you ever decided to hang up your sneakers?
How do you find the motivation to keep going and have you ever decided to hang up your sneakers?
How do you find the motivation to keep going and have you ever decided to hang up your sneakers?
Comments
We don't expect y'all to blog forever. We expect you to have interruptions in your life, for your tastes and priorities to change - for real life to interfere. But when you quit, I hope you'll leave your content up.
Y'all make me think of all those PTA parents - I was one - dedicated and active at their kids' schools for 12 or more straight years. Then, no PTA. The relief is extraordinary. But it's over and we're doing other things now.
I think most bloggers don't quite know where they are going when they start. Don't know where it will lead. The blogs help folks find their voice, focus their interests and find new interests. That makes it so unexpectedly interesting. Doing a blog changes people more than just reading blogs.
The "power of attorney" issue for blogs, Flickr accounts and the like is serious. You need somebody who knows those things to back you up. My family has all my logons but wouldn't know what to do with them. Not even to tell folks when I get sick.
a) I will have days that blogging just ain't gonna give me goose bumps.
b) I DO NOT have to particpate in EVERY single meme and event, no matter if I feel like I do.
c) Sometimes a few days away makes you appreciate and miss blogging.
I don't know where my blogging is going or how long I will continue, but I just know that for now it brings joy to me and I would miss all my bloggy friends immensely.
Sorry I wasn't much help or inspiration.
xo Lidy
I post every weekday, and I also struggle with the fact that blogging has essentially turned into a half-time job (or more), but one with little to no pay. I do it because I love it more than I don't love it, and while I certainly didn't get into blogging to pay the mortgage, at some point I am going to have to make a hard decision about whether continuing to blog is financially sustainable.
Anyway, thanks for addressing this issue. It's some comfort to know that my fellow bloggers struggle with the same things!
We'd love for our children to write a couple of good paragraphs every day. We know it's good for us too.
Jan at Rosemary Cottage
The good news is that I don't ever have to worry about inspiration. I just post to things I'm already looking up, so I'm a bit different that traditional blogs in that respect. I've been interested in DIY all my life. I'd have to totally loose interest in it to quit my blog. I hope that never happens.
As far as getting sick goes... Write some posts in advance! I post at the same time each day, so if I'm missing or late, people start emailing. I always have a few posts ready to go that I can schedule into that slot if life gets in the way.
Great podcast ladies! I love these so much!
while I listened to your podcast I realized that I missed my own anniversary on my very first blog - I started that one in June 2007 and my counter shows more than 50.000 visitors which I find is a huge number for a small niche blog such as this one: a blog about art and everything that's related to it (Images and Imagination on http://vyala.wordpress.com)
The funny thing about it is, that I started it with a post in which I talked about my intent for this blog and it went exactly as intented - to my own surprise - I am still talking about art and everything around this theme.
The funny thing is that I NEVER thought to be able to keep it up for so long nor did I ever assume to have that many readers (for me).
In fact I started it for myself, to keep track of my own thoughts regarding art, to have a kind of diary and interestingly enough there has been quite an evolution in my thinking! To my own surprise! AND I learned so much from other bloggers. The blog was the best means to define my goals, to analyse my thoughts and reactions towards other art, to become more tolerant and understanding about the motivation other artists were driven by. I also learned that it is not good at all to take oneself too seriously. Making fun of oneself from time to time loosens up all ties that you might have spun on yourself.
And this was not even the end but only one month later I was further diving into the blogworld. The next blog I started was a photography blog with random subjects which I just found interesting and which I had snapped with my camera. So the motivation for this one was simply sharing photos and a couple of thoughts - no serious intent (Magic Worlds through the Lens - http://vyalaarts.wordpress.com) but also this blog is still running now for nearly 2 years.
continued in next comment - lol
The third blog "Blooms and Blossoms" (http://vyala.blogspot.com) started about 1 year ago - because I loved to photograph flowers so much and I did not want to mix it up with everything else - so I kept it a photography blog about this theme only. Now this one is a very special one to me - because it is all about flowers and colours of course. Amazingly it does not have a large readership at all and I don't know the reason for this. I always thought that people love to see flower photography but apparently this is too mundane. A couple of times I thought to skip it entirely because I felt that hardly anyone was interested in it although there is a lot of work in it too: it has evolved into quite a database as I am trying to find all names in English and German, the botanical names in Latin and colour definition, so that anyone can search for it in the detailed category list or use the search function.
Apparently not many people are interested but I decided to keep it up for myself as long as I can do it.
The 4th blog, started last year also, was a documentary about a feral pigeon couple that decided to live and breed on our balcony. This is definitely a diary with tons of photos but also stories about "our" pigeon family - a very valuable database of close observations and interesting facts which can be called upon by anyone who's interested.
The 5th blog, a German about art and interior design, with the purpose of talking about the creation of my art work and how it could be integrated into interiors started end of last year. I killed it in the meanwhile. In Germany there is no real blogging culture and the amount of work that went into this blog was simply for the dust. It was extremely frustrating to have nearly no feedback. Even if I did it mainly for myself - you expect some feedback from time to time. But on this one came nothing.
In Germany blogging is used either as pure ranting and complaining - the Germans complain too much - against all and everything or completely superficial. People here are generally too stupid to recognize the potential of blogs or are too arrogant to understand that blogging can be more than talking about pets.
So I decided to start something similar about Art and Interior in English with an audience that is much more used to discuss things on the Internet. I love this blog and am very happy to see that more and more people love to read this blog. What could be a bigger motivation to write a blog?
So you see my motivation is to keep contact with the outer world. When I am working I am regularly completely alone. This is necessary sometimes but can be also very frustrating when you cannot find people who are likeminded or who consider everyone else as a potential competitor instead of a team player.
I love blogging and the argumentation with other people. I need it and I truly hope that there won't be any circumstances where I need to abandon it.
Greetings from Munich!
Hey, schedule me in for a guest spot soon :)
Olga (Dancing Through Paris)