Tag Archives: time

Has Blogging Lost Its Lustre?

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I’ve been blogging for years now. I don’t even know how many. Five, seven… something like that. And sometimes I feel like it’s become more of a burden than a useful outlet.

Back when I was first blogging, I was not aware of any opportunities for making money through the platform. I don’t think it was very common then. In order to make money writing online, you had to write for a content mill or online magazine/newspaper with a large following. I considered content mills, but never made the move, and I’ve never been that interested in journalism (maybe opinion pieces, but not news coverage). Blogging was still more of a personal/creative outlet than a money-making scheme. I liked it that way–being able to share my thoughts and writing with an audience, having a venue to put a little bit of myself out there. Originally I’m certain only my friends and family were reading, but they were my target audience anyway.

Suddenly, that all changed. Articles and job listings and all kinds of sources were telling me that I needed to optimize SEO to get more views on my posts. It was not good enough to express myself well and share something with the world, because doing so I wasn’t coming remotely close to the thousands of views per day that so many other sites claimed to accumulate. This was a few years ago, and even though I was not trying to make money from blogging, I felt utterly inadequate. These days, all the “how to blog” articles tell you have to use good quality pictures, fall within a certain word count, and talk about relevant topics that people want to read, like Kim Kardashian’s nude photos (this is a somewhat ironic example, as the topic is of no particular interest to me). If I’m only getting a handful of views on each post, then it must be because my posts aren’t good enough.

That, of course, is a trap it’s easy to fall into, and I’m starting to think it was created by ad companies, who are the ones benefiting most from the high number of clicks on a page. Someone out there wants us to believe that quantity (in views) equals quality (in production or content). We know this isn’t true. Some very talented people simply don’t achieve the visibility they deserve, for many reasons. Now it seems everyone’s striving for that one “viral” post, of whatever format, that will result in a steep increase in followers and, therefore, more views on each post afterward. I absolutely get it, as someone who doesn’t get enough blog views to even qualify to use WordAds (which in my opinion is not a reasonable rule), but at the same time, it’s got to stop!

I have to say that I’m really tired of worrying about my view count, why my overall number of views never seems to increase no matter how many new followers I get, and all other related things. I’m tired of wondering whether it’s better to pour my heart out, like some of the very popular blogs I’ve seen, or write extremely well-researched and crafted pieces that, in my opinion, do not belong on a blog (in most cases). Those belong in real magazines or on real sites, by real publishing companies. Blogging used to have a similar function to a diary, for me, with the small difference of knowledge that other people would be reading it. More recently, I’ve felt more of an urge, whether internal or external, to write “articles” or at least posts with a real topic, instead of just a spontaneous stream of consciousness, account of some event in my life, or whatever else blogs used to be used for.

Lately I miss the stream of consciousness. I think that if I do have specific topics to write about, a blog is as good a place as any to share them, but this idea that blog posts should always “say something” is bringing me down. The flood of blogs that are trying to be professional and presentable has given the impression that if you want to be taken seriously, you can’t just use blogging as a general brain outlet anymore. Not only is this NOT true, but I think I need the brain drain. My mind has been so stuck lately, both in a sense of feeling the need to save the “publish” button for only certain types of posts, and in a sense of being generally inarticulate and unable to think of the right word at very random but ever-more-frequent times. It’s as if so many words built up in my brain without anywhere to release that it’s become clogged, and now nothing can get through.

Does anyone have any word-Drano?

The point here is multi-pronged. 1) Your blog can be for anything you want. 2) Most of all, you should do it for you. If you’re only blogging to get views, that will probably show, and no one is interested in that. 3) You can’t predict what posts people are going to want to read. 4) Expecting to make money from almost any online platform, unless it’s through a specific site that already gets a lot of views, is a bad plan. That’s why #2 applies once again.

This post, I think, falls somewhere between the topical article and the stream of consciousness. That’s how I like to work, honestly, for topics like this. I want it to be somewhat personal and relatable, not ultra-researched and dry to the point where a lot of people click to view the post but most of them just skim over the bullet points. In a sense I could probably do better if I really took the time to formulate an essay-style post. But all that is, to me, is another false path to a “right” method of blogging, which, in case you didn’t catch it, I’ve already stated does not exist.

Losing Summer

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It is now the first day of fall. I noticed how perfect the weather was today when I went out to get my groceries. The sun shone brightly but the air was cool. A few of the trees on my street have already started to change. THIS is the best of weather.

The turn of August to September saw a flare-up of oppressive heat, but that seems to be the last surge of summer. It’s cooling off again; it seems the season is ready to accept defeat. As usual I had that moment of regret for all the days I didn’t spend at the beach, and having only sat outside at a restaurant with friends or family a few times, despite walking by such patios constantly. I barely wore sandals and I spent far too many days inside.

Every year now, I find a moment to complain about how summer is not very exciting as an adult. When you’re a kid you get the time off from school, and depending on your circumstances, your parents will take you somewhere for a vacation (even if it’s just a two hour drive to a town in the same state). For the rest of the summer you read, you spend time with friends, you hang out in someone’s pool (I always knew someone with a pool). You eat a lot of ice cream, go to barbecues, and don’t have to wake up early.

Then you start to get older. For most people, summer jobs start somewhere in the mid to late teens. Some start much earlier and a few won’t have jobs until after they graduate from college–but those will probably spend the summers volunteering or studying. (This story does not include those people who never have to work. I have no frame of reference to talk about them.) Suddenly, you don’t have all these days off anymore. Teenagers’ jobs are often part-time, so although they sacrifice some of their free days, they still have quite a lot of time to eat ice cream and hang out in their friends’ pools.

But then you enter the “real” world. You have a full time job, or two or three part time jobs, and you don’t have the time to enjoy the beach or spend a day wandering around town with your friends. You have responsibilities instead. If you do have the time to do these things whenever you want, chances are you don’t have the money. Much of your summer free-time goes to waste lamenting that you’ll barely be able to pay your bills this month, so instead of going to the beach, you scour Craigslist for a new job. Gone are the days of being free to enjoy the summertime. Just like they said it would, adulthood sucked away all the fun (I don’t know who “they” are exactly).

As summer becomes just another part of the year with the same schedule, the same stress, and the same lack of time, we long for the time when summer actually meant something more than just wondering what the hell you can wear that won’t cause you to die of heatstroke on the way to/in the office.

 

When you think about it, though, what exactly are we losing? Think back to being a kid during the summer. Really think. My memories of youthful summers are getting a little vague and fragmented at this point, but I’m fairly certain that I ended up bored and ready for summer to be over somewhere around the beginning of August. If I could go back and talk to my ten-year-old self, I’d say “Find something to do and be grateful for your lack of stress.” But unfortunately, hindsight never benefits us. I was always pretty eager to go back to school, even excited.

Of course, I got sick of being back at school after two weeks, instead of two months. I think I just liked the change, the feeling that things were moving forward. New teacher, classroom, notebooks, clothes. Sometimes new friends.

Leisurely summers feel like a story someone told me, rather than anything that really happened. Maybe I block them out because they make me feel guilty for not doing more with my free time when I had so much of it. Of course, I was a kid then, and kids don’t need to be responsible for “getting things done.” I think the problem is that now I know what I would do if I could spend my time how I chose without having to worry about adult things. I’ve felt like there could be so much art, music, friendship, love, etc. in my life, if only I had enough time.

It’s in the Execution

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I’m writing a post right now (not this one; it’s still in my drafts folder) that is swiftly becoming a timing problem. It’s the sort of post that only makes sense to publish at a certain time of year. It’s about seasons. And sure it will make exactly the same point no matter when I end up posting it, but if I don’t get to it in the next week or so, it will seem far less relevant and no one will care. I started writing the post and figured I’d finish it the day after that, but haven’t done a thing with it since.

This is actually two problems I have had as a blogger combined into one. The first is that I have many times started writing a post, based on an idea or the seed of an idea, and somehow found that it just doesn’t work out. I don’t finish it right away, and when I come back I can’t remember what I was intending to say. Or I just don’t like it. I am the first to say that not every blog post has to be a winning work of art, but I do think it should convey SOMETHING of value–and if I’m not really interested in what I’m writing, there’s no reason to expect anyone else will be. Besides, even though I tend to approach blogging as more informal writing, and therefore needing less polish than something that a “real publication” (whatever that means at this point) would print, I still do prefer to hold myself to a certain standard as a writer, which requires that I’m at least moderately pleased with the pieces I decide to put out on the vast emptiness of the internet.

The second problem, of course, is procrastination. It’s not actually that hard to think of a timely topic, but it can be a little more difficult to finish the piece while that topic is still relevant. I’m not saying I couldn’t do this if I had to, but it is one of the reasons I like to write about more general topics that are not time-bound, whether I’m writing in fiction or in the real world. (I would like to pause to acknowledge that at this point I have already done the backspace-shuffle, the typists’ most common finger dance, to fix numerous typos, and I’m wondering when I got so bad at typing. I used to be much better than this.) Ahem. Anyway. Procrastination is procrastination whether you open the file and stare at it with your fingers over the keys or go clean the kitchen instead–if you’re not writing, you’re not writing.

This leaves me in my current predicament. I can either make myself work on this post (I suppose if I hate it I just won’t post it) now-ish, or I can wait until next year, at which point I probably will have forgotten about it entirely. My concern, after looking at what I have so far, is that I won’t get the post to say what it is I am really trying to say. This is a constant struggle for me, in writing and in regular conversation. Somehow I always feel that the recipient of my thoughts just doesn’t quite get it. I don’t know it that’s my failing or theirs.

Keep an eye out. If you see a post from me very soon about the myth of summertime leisure (oo, I think that’s a much better title than what I had), then you’ll know that I succeeded in finishing the piece. If you don’t… well then you know the other thing happened.

An Unnecessary Post

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Just now, my life is feeling very bland. I’m not devoid of creative inspiration for writing, but I don’t feel a particular urge to create. I want to spend time with my friends, do something fun, exciting–but I also want to just have time alone, possibly lying in bed staring at the ceiling while listening to music.* I want to get lost in reading.

I have two thoughts on this. One is that my creative energy needs time to build up. None of our creative wells are quite bottomless, and if it hasn’t rained enough lately, they’re bound to be very low.

My other thought is that I’ve become engulfed in necessity (chores, bills, etc.), and the energy that requires just puts me in a mindset that is not conducive to writing.

From my past experience, I have to advise myself that the best way to fix this is to just start writing something.

But I need to complete this editing work first. And many other more “necessary” things.

But what could be more necessary to a writer than writing?

I am awash in dilemmas of adulthood.

 

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*Current music selection would probably be Deftones, Oh Land, or something very new age/experimental with no vocals.

My Problem with Speed-Reading

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A while ago I read (or, more accurately, skimmed) an article about an app that could train you to read a novel in 90 minutes. On the one hand I thought, “Wow, that’s impressive.” (I’m sure it’s not, to some people.) On the other hand, it made me feel … disappointed is the best word I can come up with. Disappointed that this is how people view reading, as something that should be done as quickly as possible, or else it’s a waste of time.

I understand the appeal of reading a book that quickly, as there are so many books out there I want to read, and I know there will be more, that it would be beneficial in that sense to be able to get through a book in 90 minutes. I could greatly increase my number of total books read, broaden my reading experience, etc.

But both as a reader and as a writer, this emphasis on speed-reading bothers me.

There have been times, particularly in college, when reading a little faster was necessary. I’m not arguing that you should never read quickly just to finish a book, if it’s required for your school or work to do so. But other than that, if you’re reading for pleasure, why would you be in such a hurry to be finished? If I choose to read a book, not for any assignment but because I think I will find it interesting or enjoyable, I like to spend time with it. A book is a great place to be, better, sometimes, than the real world. Particularly in very engaging books, I don’t want to rush through that world. But if I start speed-reading, then slower reading would be hard to go back to.

Then, of course, I consider speed-reading from the point of view of a writer–more specifically, a writer who intends to publish novels. Any serious writer will spend a lot of time and effort creating the content you’re reading, wanting to craft something readers will find worth their time. If I spend a year on a book (drafting, revising, etc.), I don’t want someone to pick it up only to toss it aside in an hour or two. Although real writers write for themselves, they also write for readers, and the thought that something created with care is worth only the smallest fraction of someone’s time is discouraging. There would likely be many writers who understandably reason that they should not put so much effort into their work if the people enjoying the final product are not going to appreciate it properly.

I am against this notion that a “solution” is needed to read novels faster. Internet articles? Yes, read them as fast as you can, particularly the ones that seem like they were written in ten minutes. Or even this one, which should certainly not take you longer than that to read… you’ll get the idea. But a story that someone has taken the care to craft so that they can be proud of it? Spend a little time with it. Don’t be so scared of books.

Me, of Late

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Well… picture me heaving a huge sigh. I would say “throwing my hands up in resignation,” but that’s such a cliched phrase, and also I don’t actually do that. But I do sigh a lot.

Instead of being productive and getting all that stuff done that I would love to do if I felt motivated, I’ve mostly been:

drinking too much coffee;

sleeping in an extra hour or two;

watching too much Netflix, youtube, etc.;

spending too much on food;

crying;

making messes.

I’ve been reading, but not writing, and, more than anything else, wondering when I’ll have enough time and/or energy to start doing the things I really want to do in life. Like learning guitar and studying languages. Applying for writers’ residencies (they have them for unpublished writers, right?). Figuring out how all the features of my camera work. It’s not even a fancy camera, it’s just a basic digital one, but for some reason it’s not functioning as it claimed it would.

I know I should start with the “spring cleaning” purge of all the stuff that’s collected over the past year or so that I have been intending to throw away or give away or sell. I want to sell some things because I need money, but I think that might be more trouble than it’s worth, since I don’t really own anything valuable.

I wrote a poem last night, but it’s rather private and I don’t want to share it. But at least I did write something. Better than nothing at all. Or… that’s what they say, although really it’s almost as if I wrote nothing at all.

Do you ever wonder why you love the thing you love but then you never feel like doing it?

Is There A Pill for This? Or an App?

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So what have I been doing? Nothing.

My bedroom is a mess. So is my mind. And probably every other part of me.

I’m sure I’ve done something wrong in my life to get here. I don’t believe in fate, but it doesn’t feel like I am where I’m supposed to be. I can’t go into more detail, because I really don’t know how to explain it.

~~~

 

I come up with anywhere from one to five blog post topics a day, split between this site and The No-Recipe Life, my lifestyle/food/everything else platform. I’m sure some of them are not really worth the time, but I’ve never said I wanted either blog to be perfect, and anyway, that would be a fruitless endeavor. Other posts seem like excellent ideas and I feel that I have thoughts in that area that are worth sharing. If only one other person appreciates my words–or even if no one but me appreciates them–it’s enough to be worth my time.

Lately, I have sat down and typed out none of these ideas. I’m sure many of them are now gone forever. I will never have that idea again. Out of all the possible posts that might have happened, only a few would have really contributed anything notable. But now they never will, and that should make the world just the slightest bit sad.

I’ve been really busy lately. Ok, not really busy. Really stressed. Blogging fell by the wayside, as they say (they being people who use cliches a lot, and me, apparently), because my creative impulses were very low for a while. I can barely feel them even now, but there are times when you have to decide to do something regardless. I have a lot of things to get in order before I can come back to blogging with any regularity, and I’m only starting to make a plan to get things figured out. Not that I ever expect to figure things out… but at least I can attempt to bring some organization to my life.

 

Even though I’m not feeling optimistic about anything, I still have to try. It’s definitely not ideal. It makes motivation very hard to find, for anything.

Wow, I wish this post didn’t sound so depressing. If I’m lucky this will purge some of these feelings from my mind and I will start to do better…

Five Things Friday: January 17, 2014

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Three creative things I want to do RIGHT NOW. But seriously, literally right now.

1. Write for a really large block of time and finish at least one short story (that’s been in the works for a pretty long time now). In addition, make some progress on the novel I was writing that I was going to work on a bit in December, and then didn’t because I’m just too lazy to ever be productive.

2. Get paints and brushes and DIY the cardboard boxes I use as storage bins so that my room can be pretty and not just a complete mess.

3. Totally reorganize my room. It doesn’t sound like a “creative” thing, but it would have to be to figure out how to make everything fit nicely in my room.

Two reasons I’m sure I won’t do these things.

1. Chores and errands and adult things like that. It’s often tempting to forego responsibility for awesomeness, but at some point the concept was ingrained in me that if you do that you end up with a mess that’s harder to deal with later. So I try. Sort of. But I also waste a lot of time watching tv shows, so what’s the real problem here?

2. Currently editing the longest manuscript ever.  EVER. Aside from, like, encyclopedias or whatever. And because of time and deadlines and stuff, I’m going to have to work quite a bit this weekend, because otherwise we might have problems.

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It’s 2014! When you have fewer life changes, it feels like time is just passing you by and making you older. I HATE it. I feel so stuck right now. Not fun. What’s my goal? Where’s my end point? I need these things in order to actually function.

First five things Friday of the year–and the first one for a few weeks. I remember my original intention to do this every week, somehow missing the fact that Friday nights are usually spent hanging out with friends and way too tired out from the week to have clever, coherent thoughts… I am the tiredest.

I’m having major life issues right now–mostly, realizing that I don’t think the skills from my current job are really transferable to any other jobs, which is something that’s probably going to work against me in the future. Unfortunately,  further details can’t really be given on the internet, so I guess I’ll just have to be vague.

My birthday is approaching. I’m about to be 27. It’s both still young and too old. You know what? I blame the internet. If I didn’t hear so many stories about people who are super successful in their 20s, I’d probably be much more ok with where I am in life. (Or at least marginally more ok with it…)

I think that I sound awfully boring right now. It’s so bad that I almost want to delete this whole post and not blog at all right now, but, well, why not.

Five Things Friday: December 6, 2013

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I just remembered about this… I thought I might just do it tomorrow morning, but then I realized I wasn’t going to do it, most likely, if I waited, and I can’t miss the first five things of December! I am really into Christmas this year, much more than last year… I think that I was a bit depressed last December, most of the month, or something. I was all artistic and thoughtful in my last post (which you should read if you haven’t yet), so right now I’m just going to vomit some words through my keyboard (gross), because it can be very hard for me to be thoughtful when I want to sleep. It’s almost 1, and I work a “normal” 9-5 schedule, so I shouldn’t have to explain that I’m tired. Isn’t everyone tired on Friday night? 

Five things I must do this December: 

1) Make eggnog cupcakes. I plan to do this tomorrow, that is, Saturday. Check out my food/life blog, linked on the sidebar (I think), for a post about that. I will almost certainly make one. 

2) Film three Christmas-related videos for my youtube channel. I did make one, but we’ll see how the rest of the month goes. I’m trying to stay motivated to actually do things. 

3) Continue writing in some sort of semi-regular fashion. Instead of never. I have a nice idea for a short story that will be wintery. It’s a simple concept so I think it should be pretty easy to write a draft that I am willing to let people read…

4) Eat many vegetables: this is not me going on a diet or denying myself anything. This is in fact me craving healthy food and wanting to nourish my body with fresh foods, nutrients, vitamins, etc. 

5) Work hard, but also relax. 

Bonus: Bettie Page Reveals All, a new documentary film, is going to be at the Coolidge theater next weekend. I really want to see it, but it’s a late movie, so it will depend on how my schedule works out in general, and how tired I am.

7) Sleep more, but wake up on time.  

No-nowrimo Recap and Review

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Here we are, at last. November both dragged and flew by. My non-nanowrimo deadline has passed. How did I do? Well…

With a goal of 30,000 for the month, it was much more likely than the goal of 50k for the month, and would hardly have been less complete of a work (as discussed before, 50,000 words is not ever long enough to be a novel. Maybe once… a novella at best).

I started off pretty good, the first few days, and then, as always, I got caught up in work. I was too stressed about getting things done to channel any of my energy to writing. That’s my go-to excuse lately, but it’s true. I might have been able to do more over Thanksgiving, but it turns out being on vacation and doing a bunch of family stuff is not always the most conducive frame for writing productively. I finally managed to do a little bit of work on the novel I switched to last night.

My total was about 8500 words. True, it’s not really anywhere near my goal. Still it’s something. Last year I had a goal of just writing any amount every day (hint: specific goals are a lot more motivating), and I doubt I even made 1000 words, which means I did at least ten times better, in terms of words written, this time. That’s a pretty good improvement: if I do only five to six times more next time I attempt such a goal, I’ll be rolling in pages.

Not to mention that getting into the story last night makes it feel more likely that I’ll carry some writing motivation into December.

Thanksgiving itself was great, and maybe I’ll write about making cranberry sauce on the other blog. The pumpkin pie was excellent as well, and completely doused with whipped cream. Heh…

What to do now? Back to work tomorrow. Need to work hard, because December is at least as busy, with Christmas, as November is. I’ll try not to overspend on groceries so that I can reasonably afford gifts. Most of my food money goes toward coffee, and coffee-related items. As for now, I think I’m going to use this 50% off Starbucks coupon (today only), work out a little, and try to get through more of Just Kids–a very good and interesting book so far.