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BLOGGING AS A DIARY: THE FREQUENCY OF POSTING |
But something about blogging, like keeping a diary, becomes important and seems to become alive. Some people know they want to blog seriously even before they start. Others are surprised by how much they love it as they get involved. This chapter is about some of the issues that arise in daily, determined blogging.
Daily blogosphere macrologue and an important part of selfpromotion. TrackBacks are notoriously difficult for newcomers to understand. If you have heard of the term and experience the white noise it can stimulate in the brain, your dark days are nearly over.
Here’s the truth: Blogging is a grind. A joy, to be sure, but difficult to sustain over the long haul. Creating frequent entries can seem like a chore. Of course, nobody is putting a gun to your head. At least, I don’t suppose so; if somebody is putting a gun to your head, you have bigger troubles than deciding what to write about.
The pressure in blogging is the need to blog often and to keep the blog going over weeks and months. It’s easy enough to blog often for a short while (usually at the start), and it’s easy enough to blog infrequently for a long period.
But putting the two together is harder than most people realize when they are contemplating their first blog. There’s the imaginary gun to your head again: Nobody can force you to post entries every day or continue your blog for the rest of your life.
Coping with blog stress is a matter of pacing. As with any other endeavor,diving in too fast at the start invites burnout. The tendency is to believe that you must keep up whatever pace you start with, which might be ten entries a day. That pace would be loads of fun for the first three days, then a bit of pressure for the next three days. After two weeks you’d wish you had never, and after a month you’d be on a ledge threatening to jump. First, switch to decaf if you’re attracted to ledges. Second, you don’t have to maintain a manic posting tempo if you went overboard in the first week. Third, don’t go overboard in the first week. Fourth, spend a bit of time contemplating what you want to accomplish with your blog and how much effort it will take.
“Accomplish?” you might be thinking. “I’m not into accomplishing. I just want to have an easy Web site and put up pictures of my kids.” Well, there you go. You’ve contemplated your blog’s purpose and formulated a mission statement. This particular mission is fairly relaxed and should not inspire dramatic leaps.