Blogging – Sometimes You Just Need a Break

When you’re a blogger, or running a business that involves blogging, sometimes you just need a break. It’s inevitable. I don’t care if you’ve been a machine, blogging every day for 3 years. At one time, I did it for over 5 years straight, and sometimes blogged up to 3 times in a day, plus I had blogging for other websites.

However, these days, I’m not obsessed with blogging. I love to blog, just as I still love to write, but the drive to make myself blog isn’t running myself ragged. Sure, I’ve blogged about advising people to blog regularly, but that is a suggestion for those wants to keep their reader’s attention or Google’s attention. It’s a suggestion for the ambitious.

See, the thing is, not all of your readers are online at the same time as you, and sometimes may not even be online for a day or more. That’s life. You can blog, and people will miss a post. It happens. No need to panic!

When you’re not blogging, you probably should be promoting recent and old content. You probably should go back and cut content that no longer is true (old links to dead places), or update information that is no longer current.

You can also repurpose the content into images, audio, and video. Or you can republish on other places like LinkedIn, Hubspot, or Medium.

I’m not telling you to reduce your blogging habits. Blog how you like. If you’re ambitious… blog away, like the blogging god that you are. Just don’t lose out on the joy of blogging. When that starts to happen, you spiral into the stages of burnout, where you not only stop blogging, you don’t even want to consider talking about it with others.

I’ve written posts on giving blog post ideas for different niche, advice about blogger’s block, SEO tips for bloggers, how to get your blog mojo back, and more. It’s because of my love of writing. I see how eager new bloggers are, and I’ve seen some potentially rockstar bloggers fall through the cracks. My concern is for those who could still love blogging, and get to this point.

Please take time for yourself, and think about what you really want to do with your blog, and how you can make it a comfortable part of your life. Make a schedule for yourself, rather than rush to blog because, “I need to blog today or else.”

Blogging isn’t perfect, but never force the words when you don’t have them. Take a breather, do something that doesn’t involve blogging, or research to find the words. I’ve found that people who get to the point of obsession and desperation in blogging fall in either: aren’t leveraging their social media channels well, or aren’t writing the right content for their audience, or not getting the sales or business or traffic they want. Many times, it’s a combination of two or three of these areas.

Have you gotten to this point? What got you to blogger burnout? Have you recovered, and if so, what did you do for your own recovery process?

Good luck, and happy blogging!