How to Fall in Love with Blogging Again

It's hard to ignore all the ways blogging has changed over the past several years. And it seems like personal blogging in particular is all but dead—though there are a handful of bloggers holding on (and kudos to you all!).

This isn't the first time I've brought these feelings up, and my voice is just one of many echoing similar sentiments. How the internet has become so sparkly, Pinterest-y, Instagrammable. The sponsorships. The sneaky affiliate links hidden behind bit.ly link shorteners. The transition to other platforms like Twitter and Instagram (and YouTube—hi, I'm guilty of that). People who used to blog just to blog but have since turned into brands or coaches of every variety. The lack of stories and reflection and heart. While I don't fault anyone for chasing online opportunities and shifting to the blog-as-a-business model, I miss when blogging felt like catching up with a friend, as opposed to being marketed to. I do think it's possible to meld the personal and professional, but it seems increasingly rare in this online world—I've even had someone end a blog friendship when I didn't immediately switch from "blog friend" to "customer" when they started an online business.

While we often navel-gaze about the changes we are witnessing as bloggers, it seems a bit less common for people to discuss how they are personally planning to deal with the changes moving forward. Because when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter what other bloggers are doing. Really. Or at least it shouldn't. In the personal blogging world, we can still decide what roles blogs play in our online life and how we want our own blogs to be.

Sure, one option is to quit. And I came dangerously close to closing down my blog since I wasn't sure if it was relevant anymore, or if I wanted to keep putting in the effort. But I just surpassed my fifth blogging anniversary on New Year's Eve, and my heart says I can't give up on it just yet. I'm still in a phase of life (married but childless and trying to figure out my creative path) where blogging provides some value to me.

At one point in time, the reason I blogged was largely for the community, but as interactions are more infrequent than they used to be, it doesn't make sense for that to be my primary motivator. Of course, I take the blame for a significant part of this as I haven't exactly kept a regular posting schedule to encourage comments and interactions, nor have I even gotten that personal as of late. I've also moved away from the art and DIY community that I was originally a part of.

Instead of sitting around lost in nostalgia for the blogging days of yore, I'm considering how I can return to a point of enjoying blogging again, in whatever way works for me. With a little reflection and intention, I've come up with the a few action steps.

How to Fall in Love with Blogging Again

1. Clean out my blog feeds.
A common phrase in my house is "Garbage in, garbage out." Mark and I often say this to each other as a reminder to eat healthy food so that our bodies and health thrive, but this sentiment can apply to anything else we consume, including media and blogs. My favorite blogs are personal, reflective, thoughtful, and/or inspiring (NOT aspirational), so I've cleared out any blogs that don't fulfill me in those ways. Gone are the coaching blogs who only speak in the second person or provide reductive lists of life hacks, the numerous lifestyle blogs with their identical white/gold/pink decor, and the blogs where life is depicted exclusively as sunshine and rainbows. Of course, this is an individual choice not meant to knock anyone who does identify with these kinds of blogs. I'll be keeping an eye out for smaller blogs with fresh perspectives, though I don't want to devote too much time to this, as this quest can transform into procrastination if I'm not careful.

2. Manage my feeds.
I've decided to utilize two different feed aggregators, Feedly and Bloglovin. I love the simplicity of Feedly, and this where all my must-read blogs go. It is already a regular part of my morning routine, and I follow few enough blogs on Feedly that I can get to all the posts before I'm halfway through my coffee. But there are some lifestyle blogs that I do enjoy but do not want in my face quite as frequently, so I use Bloglovin as a sort of B-tier. This lets me check in with these blogs only when I feel like it—often on Fridays because I tend to enjoy those "weekend links" types of posts. And I never feel bad about using the "mark all as read" button.

3. Re-examine my own blogging goals.
As I mentioned, I don't think I can safely rely on "community" as my primary reason for blogging since that is something that exists outside myself and my control. So what are my reasons for blogging right now? It's certainly not sponsorship, notoriety, or a full-time blogging career (ha!). The biggest reason is simply this: to write. Sure, I have my journal, which I've been using more frequently this year, but writing of any kind comes most easily to me when I do it frequently and compulsively. In journals, in Word docs, on my blog. It is the habit I most want to cultivate this year, so regular blogging will just be another outlet to do so. My secondary blogging goals have to do with what I choose to write about, and echo the content I enjoy reading: posts that are personal, reflective, thoughtful, inspiring. If I'm able to foster some sort of community/engagement out of this type of content, that's great, but if not, it will still serve the purpose of getting me in the chair to write.

4. Set a schedule.
Creative momentum is a real phenomenon—projects in motion stay in motion and projects at rest stay at rest. I've learned that again and again through my YouTube channel. It is so much easier to keep creating than it is to start creating after a break. With that in mind, I'm planning on sitting down once a month to come up with a rough list of posts, and then trying to post two times per week (typically on Tuesdays and Thursdays). I'll give that schedule a few months to see how it works for me, but it seems like a reasonable amount—consistent, but not overwhelming or distracting from any other parts of my life.

5. Blog for myself. 
If I'm focused on any sort of external metric—page views, comments, how I compare to other bloggers—I'll never be able to feel satisfied. As a personal blog, the only thing that really matters is that I'm sharing what I want to share in the way I want to share it, that I am challenging myself to write, and that am learning about myself and growing along the way. See also: My Blogging Oath.

6. Reach out.
The last piece of the blogging puzzle is to ensure that I am supporting the blogs I love, especially the smaller, more personal blogs. I want other bloggers to know their efforts are appreciated—especially when so many of us are thinking about the fates of our blogs—and the best way for me to do that is to leave comments and to share their posts. I'm too often a lurker—I often feel shy about making that first introductory comment, or I hold off on commenting because I want to give myself time to come up with a more thoughtful comment than "loved this post!!!" and fail to actually do so. So I want to be mindful about actually leaving comments.

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And that's my plan. While I have branched out into other areas of the internet with slow-and-steady success and could theoretically put all of my attention there, blogging was my first internet love and I can't give up on it just yet. The internet is just a small part of my life and I have no problem cutting out what's not working—*cough*Facebook*cough*—but I do still appreciate my blog as a place to work through my thoughts, and I do enjoy looking back on all that I have blogged. We're going through a rocky patch right now, but I'm hopeful we can fall back in love again this year.

{Image via Death to the Stock Photo, text additions by me.}