I’ve decided to write about my symptoms lol. Even since I’ve passed that 2 years mark, that blog graveyard curse feels real. The more I learn about blogging, the less pleasurable it has become. So here we go, sharing my blogger’s symptoms instead of goals 😉
**Will like to emphasis that this straight hair do took an hour~ my brother didn’t recognise me LOL clearly straight hair and I are not meant to be.
Knowing SEO ruins life
Yup, the bread a butter of organic growth is actually pretty poisonous for my mind. Example:
- Have I repeated the key words enough?
- O, let me add a header so that the relevance goes up.
- Back link others posts to boost things up, yeah?
- Think of ways to add specific wordings to bait the engines
- Add a bunch of meta data and alt info to the photos (takes soooo much time) etc.
The list rages on. It is stressful. I always feel that my posts are inadequate if I don’t all the skills set possible. At the end, it was like, I will never be ready to post! Don’t know about you, but for me, these type of ‘extra’ effort is totally trashing my creativity and personal enjoyment as a whole.
Social media is a boring stupor
Scheduled posts, regulated time, colour scheme, reaction inducing content, hash tags (for IG 25 – 30), comment and like account similar to your own blah blah blah. How is it possible to enjoy blogging? Or am I supposed to run my blog like a professional?
Affects decision making
This one is maybe a bit odd. Selecting visit choices based on how photogenic the place is or whether the place has any photo op possibilities. Life ruining, I swear. It is like, I battle to enjoy the place at all.
This is something that Museo del Prado reminded me. **As I am writing this I was like, “Maybe I should only schedule this post after I’ve written about Museo del Prado (Madrid, Spain)? This way I can back link.” See how SEO knowledge ruins life? ** In this museum, NO photo of any sort is allowed. As I explored the museum, I realised how pleasant it was to just not take photos at all. Anyways, you know where I am going with this. It just that after blogging for a while, it causes me to amass a TON of photo. Which normal person takes 300 hundred shoots withing 3 hours? I am not talking about with a phone. I am referring to taking the bloody 1.5kg + camera around with me everywhere. I even specifically only buy handbags that caters for this type of needs.
Hesitation to publish
Another symptom is thinking too much. As I learnt more about blogging, I got more critical of my own posts. So what happens? A ton of drafts and nothing published! A more recent victim would be my Bourjois Healthy Mix BB cream. Just because Bourjois’ official website’s ingredient list doesn’t match the list on the packaging, I kept postponing publishing my posts. **btw, after 4 months of chasing after Bourjois, they still have not clarify on that matter; so I ended up only doing a first impression for youtube.
Fellow bloggers quitting
The nice thing about starting a blog is meeting people along the way, usually, fellow bloggers that started their blog around the same time (within the same year). Soon after 2 years blogversary, people will start to post less or just quit all together. It is very triggering! Yes, Stashy, love and hate you at the same time. You are causing me stress by quitting. The biggest impact of bloggers that I love quitting is that it is very much a bitter sweet sensation. It is like, I totally understand why they quit.
*Stashy is my doppelganger, she called it quit and now I am forced to just read all her archive for a 2nd / 3rd time. She wrote almost exclusively about beauty.
But then again, I also meet mega committed bloggers like Rachel (beauty blogger) who is just getting better and better at her craft. She is soooo incredibly consistent with her posts! It is soooo admirable that she stay committed for so long!!! If you don’t get the idea by now, blogging is NOT a joke and it takes a lot of time / effort.
As a closing statement (lol), there is no magic fix to any of these symptoms.
11 Comments
Umm… I’m a little sorry for influencing you by quitting blogging? 😆
SEO is so time consuming! I never followed all the guides and recommendations. For me it was always about engagement rather than trying to lure random unknown strangers to my blog. shrug
IG is so uninteresting to me now. I feel like the content is all the same? I even bore myself, to be honest! Life is repetitive, for better or worse. I quite enjoy having routine and whatnot – it doesn’t make for compelling social media content, however.
And what kind of way is it to live, if the blog is dictating choice of places to visit?! I tried very hard not to let the blog influence my purchasing decisions but I’m sure it did. I realized that I needed live my life for me… not to have an audience.
In the end, it’s entirely a personal choice. Does blogging enrich your life, or detract from it? For me, I found the cons outweighed the pros hence why I stopped.
PS. Love the straight hair look! I was just thinking the other day that I’d like to straighten my hair but then remember that it takes forever. 😛
It is totally crazy that your comment went into spam. You’re a repeated approved commentator. These spam filters are clearly faulty.
You are totally right about enjoying things for you and not for an audience hey. It is like buying / doing something for social approval. I guess that is why social media isn’t my favourite thing. It is literaturely exposing oneself explicit social approval. I don’t want to just posts content to show what I have been doing. I want to share some info that can be useful for other people. But then again, that’s not how social media works haha
sigh & shrug I haven’t figured out the pros and cons yet. For the time being, I am still into blogging. I think I will try to practice less SEO and less promo for my blog for traffic.
O, that “straight hair” only remained straight for all of 3 hours. Honestly, straight hair is not worth it wahaha.
I’ve noticed a lot of people that started blogging around the same time as I did have been either quitting entirely or blogging a lot less.
I hope that you keep on blogging, I love your blog posts and photos! ❤️
Hey, Jodi~~ exactly!!! So many people has quit 🙁 Thank you for your encouragement~~ we all need to stay strong 😀 xox hugs
These are actually the right ones winded up in a right post. Even I’ve quitted blogging.😂😂
But anyways post something related to Madrid as I love real Madrid FC.😋
Wahaha Will do~~ I am still trying to sort my Madrid photos. Soooo totally behind 🙁
I certainly hope you can muster the energy to keep on blogging. I know a lot of stuff can get you down, but don’t let it. The people who like what you write will always be there for you.
Aw~~ that is so sweet. Thanks a lot for this comment, Anthony xox I am on my shattered nerve. This comment means more to me than I can express.
You’re definitely welcome. I know blogging can turn into a chore, but I hope it remains a labour of love.
I have been blogging for quite a long time and I really don’t have that many followers and I have not reaped any financial rewards from blogging.
However, I have read some great stuff and met some great people.
Have a fantastic day.
Also, I have just been asked to create on of those award posts. It requests that I recommend other blogs. Would you like to be in that recommendation list? (You can be on the list and ignore the reposting part if you want.)
A funny thing. I hadn’t really thought about how many people become weary of blogging and then quit…but as I am working on this “awards” post, I looked over the list of blogs I follow and there are a lot of people who haven’t posted in a long time.
I haven’t thought about it either until Stashy called quit that I noticed how many people have quit / gone quiet completely. Then I started to look online for statistic… it was a total rabbit hole >_<