I don’t know what to blog about.
Walking to my last final Friday morning with Mrs. Jesus and ME, we were discussing the things that we couldn’t wait to do now that we had all this free time, no classes to study for or things that had to get done. I don’t remember what they said—I was still cramming for our final and thus not listening to remember—but mine was blogging. I couldn’t wait to get back to blogging.
This semester has been very stressful for me. The problem with my stress, though, is that I don’t really notice it until it’s gone. Friday morning, standing in the shower and knowing I only had a paragraph and a half to finish my last paper and I was done with my portfolio, done with my Rhetoric class, and it was like I was washing away an accumulation of grime that I hadn’t even noticed. I felt cleaner coming out of that shower than I have this whole year—and it’s not like I don’t shower every day.
When I’m stressed, though, I lose interest in everything I do for fun. Blogging seems like a luxury I couldn’t afford, knitting a vague memory of something I used to enjoy. I haven’t read the books I wanted to because I felt guilty for reading something not assigned, so I read crap books that made me feel bad about reading them.
The end of the semester is like the light at the end of the tunnel. I suddenly want to start new knitting projects, read books that have been on the pile for months, have brilliant ideas for stories, and finally, reconnect with my blog.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what to blog about. Josh wrote a fantastic post the other day about who he wanted to be, what he wanted to do. He sent me a rough draft of the post for editing, and seeing his final, I am blown away. So much better than his first go round.
What made the difference? His personality showed through. He didn’t just tell me something, he gave me a story to illustrate his point. A personal story. Which makes sense, since Josh and I are personal bloggers.
It’s hard being a personal blogger some times. I mean, sure, it seems like it would be easy because you can write about whatever you want to. But at the same time, it’s hard, because it’s personal. This blog is all about me. It’s a reflection of what I think and believe and experience. And sometimes, blogging becomes hard because it seems like nothing good enough is going on to blog about.
After all, how many times can I write about breaking up with a long-term boyfriend (apparently not at all, because I’m not ready to rip that scab off), about being single and dating again, about finals and grades and classes and school?
Each time I sit down to blog, I want it to be something new. I want the act of writing to bring me a new truth, and for the audience, the act of reading to open them up to something they never thought about.
Lately, it feels like I’m regurgitating the same things over again. I haven’t hit onto anything profound—for me, at the very least—in a very long time. There have been very few moments in the last few months that I have thought, as Mrs. Jesus would say, “now that’s blogworthy.”
So this summer, I’m going to rethink what makes something blogworthy, come up with a blog-buster, plumb the depths of my life to find a truth that has been lurking around in the dark corners of my mind. And hopefully, pull out some entertaining writing to boot.
So, I don’t know what to blog about. But I’ve got all summer to find my groove again.
P.S.: If you’re looking for a blog editor, for either copy or content, I’m your girl. Going rate is $10 an hour, and a post this length would take me about 15 minutes for content, less for strict copy. For inquiries: lisa (at) unsympathetic (dot) net.
Hmmm, I’m thinking it’s quite the opposite though. Being a personal blogger myself, I think it’s easy to write about your personal life. It’s easy to be personal.
But it’s hard to turn it into something more than that. It’s hard to turn it into a story people can relate to.
I mean, there are always ample things we do in our lives that we can write down. Unless you live under a rock or never just get out there and do things, the choices on what to write about can be pretty limited…but we still have a choice. It’s not that we don’t have anything to blog about. It’s that we don’t know how to blog about it.
So yes, to turn the mundane into a story. To turn simple plots of our life into an interesting piece. There is the challenge. One I’m still learning. One every personal blogger should strive to achieve.
Edrei—
I’ve been stewing a week, contemplating how to respond. Not because I think you’re wrong, but because I think you’re so right I didn’t know how to contribute more than “yes, exactly.”
I think the hard part in being a personal blogger isn’t in being personal so much as making sure it’s worthwhile. I’ve never been a diary keeper. I’m not much for keeping track of what happens in my life day by day. It seems that lately, though, I don’t write anything at all because the thought that runs through my head is “well, if I didn’t write about that, how can I write about this.”
Also, it’s hard being a personal blogger because there is so much to write about, it becomes hard to sit down and let my mind focus on just one event. I try to keep my blog posts from hopping about like my conversations do—where I interrupt myself multiple times to tell other stories in the middle of telling a story, and so do nothing but confuse whoever is listening to me.
Well, one of the ways I deal with multiple thoughts is to write a post of those random thoughts (which I call “doing a chickybabe” after the blogger that inspired me to such a post). Think Twitter on steroids. A list of one or two sentences about what’s on my mind. Practicing to make it as impact sounding as I can.
Or…like another blogger I know, she does write snippets of her life and events which could be for one blog post, but write many of them in a single blog post separating them via a line for each separate event. That might work well for your blog because we don’t see previous posts offhand on your site and you blog sporadically.
It’s just ideas to kick around though. Part of being a personal blogger is to find a writing style we’re comfortable with. I went around emulating plenty of personal bloggers that I loved to find that balance. Now I can just blog what comes to mind and not be torn by it.
I think that’s what makes personal bloggers so much more fun to read—at least for me. Everyone has their own style and tone and they themselves show through with everything they right. I have been noticing how people are changing up their style, moving to Tumblr or Twitter only, their blog now just a life-stream collection of what they’ve been up to on the internet. I find myself struggling against that, wanting to do a tumblr style thing in addition to the full post, but wanting to keep my content consolidated onto one domain and how to do that.
Also, I ran across Gnorb’s post on Quality: When Enough is Enough, and how difficult it is for him to post things that he doesn’t thing is his best quality, among the other things he covers in his post. I feel that way too, especially since blogging has been my only outlet of creative writing. I feel like, if I’m going to push out 600+ words to the world, it better be the best damn thing I’ve written that day, and a lot of times, it doesn’t.
It also doesn’t help that I’ve suddenly become stunted because for the first time, people are reading my blog that I—well, not that I never intended, but that I didn’t expect. These last few months have made me more cautious about how I word things, because it’s become clear in a very big way that you don’t know who’s reading. Not that I regret anything I’ve written about, or the way I’ve worded it, but I’ve become self-conscious and begin to second guess myself.
Which is just silly, because I’ve always owned up to my words. It’s like knowing that these people were reading took the rest of my confidence, when I was already struggling just to post, now it’s I’ve got to write and impress these people.
Sigh.
That’s why personal blogging is so hard for me. It’s not like I can boot up the feed reader and regurgitate whatever Apple news has come down the pipeline. My posts aren’t based on world events or local news or hot topics. It’s always been about what I am finding interesting at the moment, and apparently what I find interesting right now is twiddling my thumbs.
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