I enjoyed this story. “Media executives sometimes operate under the impression that writers are interchangeable, or that they could even do the job themselves. Now we get to watch how that turns out.” This was culled from a bigger article that also serves as a link dump on the subject.
Blogging is hard, especially if you are trying to make a living at it, which, fortunately, I’m not. There are new bloggers who don’t know why they haven’t gotten thousands of followers and hundreds of dollars per day.
As someone said, “To make money you gotta have a niche, and you damn well better like that niche. ‘“This blog is about portraits of Abraham Lincoln molded from earwax. Our community is scattered around the globe but very dedicated.'”
bloguer est difficile
Blogging is hard because the blog is, ideally, a dialogue with your audience. Some of my best commenters have, to put it gently, been going through stuff. And one, Dustbury, died last year. Uncomfortably, on 09/09/2019, my blog received 1703 views, 1479 specifically about his death.
One of his fellow acolytes, Fillyjonk, who has had recent troubles of her own, has been blogging over 18 years.
If you don’t want to write about COVID-19 every single day – and I don’t – blogging is particularly hard. I can’t write about the plays and movies I saw because I didn’t see them. Because my wife and daughter are home, I’m not able to carve out as much Roger time as the retiree had gotten used to having.
Perhaps there are folks out there watching videos, bingeing on TV series, and devouring books. To quote the poet, I ain’t me, babe.
So why do it? Why blog? Because there are things I wouldn’t know if I didn’t blog intermittently. In fact, there are things I’d forget in five minutes if I hadn’t blogged about it. Admittedly, there are few things I blogged about and still forget about.
And I blog to maintain my sanity (if any), my equilibrium. I try to keep my mind working trying to find the next subject.
Well done, Roger! I’ve been doing the blog thing since before they were called blogs, but I only managed a post every day clip for one year (in 2004, with a daily poem). I felt like I’d done something epic with that. So for maintaining that consistency for decades and beyond, with great quality writing . . . Well sir, my hat’s off to you, with proper respect and awe!
Well done! Yes, many challenges stand in the way. Maybe you could try cooking recipes you haven’t before and posting a photo and then talk about it? Or maybe spread some rocks. Apparently those sorts of things give some people to talk about or they wouldn’t blog at all.