where wildly different is perfectly normal
It’s just not quite the same
It’s just not quite the same

It’s just not quite the same

Blogging is much different than it was back when I started. I’ve had this site (though originally under a different name) for seven years this January, and read blogs for a full year before that, just to make sure it was something I would want to do. When I first started, it was all about community. I’d comment on blogs, others would comment here, we’d all link to each others’ posts, and it was an online community like no other. This was before Twitter and Facebook crashed the party. Also? Get off my lawn, I’m Internet-old.

Now it feels as though that community is gone, replaced by pages on Facebook and quick snippets on Twitter. While I use both (Facebook considerably more than Twitter; I can’t express myself as I’d like with only 140 characters), it’s not the same. I can share a lot more information more quickly with a post on Facebook, but…I like to write. Blogs seem to have become a place to market your brand, whatever that is, rather than a place to write and connect. I have no brand to market, so oftentimes wonder why I keep on keeping on.

NaBloPoMo ends tomorrow, and with a huge smile and sense of relief I’ll be able to claim I managed it for four years in a row. This year was tougher than the others, mainly because I felt like I was writing into a dark void. I know a great deal of that was me; you can only read about someone else’s psyche-cracking stress for so long before you just call it a day and leave for the sake of your OWN psyche. I totally get that, I’ve done it myself.

So after tomorrow I’m taking a bit of a break, for many reasons. For starters, hello holidays. But also to get my mind a little more…entertaining…and to figure out exactly what I want to do with this little corner of the interwebz. I just know I can’t keep writing into a dark void, it’s demoralizing. I hope to return, refreshed, as soon as I feel…refreshed. In the meantime, I’ll be posting stuff on the Laughing at Chaos Facebook page, participating in the weekly #gtchat on Fridays, and contributing over at An Intense Life.

11 Comments

  1. I am curious to see where you go with your blog. I have made changes to mine that I am not wild about and am rethinking as well. It is a strange web now that the marketers are in every corner.
    I love what you do with writing about your experience and hope that what ever you do decide to do, I keep having a venue to read what you have to say.

  2. Enjoy your break. I promise you it only *feels* like a dark void. And even if you never got a comment on here all year (you get a lot more than I do!), I know that people are finding you through Google and no doubt recognizing that your situation is similar tho their situation and taking comfort in that. And possible walking away with advice, too.

    Also? Hello, you are published author! You. Wrote. A. Book.

    Maybe this is more about goals than the blog per se?

  3. We all need a break once in a while. Enjoy your time but be re-assured that your blogging is not lost to everyone. I read them, as many of us do, but sometimes we need to hear and see that to believe it so here it is — keep writing when you are ready because I will be waiting with anticipation of your insights.

  4. Reading (lurking on) your blog was one of the things that got me to finally begin writing myself. I’m complete newbie and still finding my voice but I understand about talking to the void. I enjoy your posts, here and on FB, and hope to see you back at it after the holidays. Enjoy!

  5. I’ve just started blogging (you’re the first person I know of thats ever connected to one of my post, or even read them besides my mom). Many of my favorite blogs have just stopped, so I hope you’re not one of them. May you have some amazing, restful holidays and continue on posting.

  6. You aren’t talking into a void. We’re here reading still. You’ve been my introduction to my own son and I’m still learning. I figure I write because I want to write and if I get five readers and no comments on the post, so be it.

Whaddya think?

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