{"id":718,"date":"2013-09-02T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=718"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:38:30","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:38:30","slug":"rekindling-my-love-for-blogging-or-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=718","title":{"rendered":"Rekindling My Love for Blogging, Or, Is the Thrill Gone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometime over the past year or two, the whole blog thing became a chore. Posting, commenting, writing book reviews, “maintaining an online presence”–it wasn’t so much fun anymore.<\/p>\n

I hate to admit that, because I really threw myself into it for a while there. And I truly think blogs offer something of value, not just in general, but to the particular cadre of readers we accumulate over time. Blogs are mini-communities; groups of (formally or informally) interconnected blogs extend that community even farther and bring together people with similar interests, making us all part of a larger discussion.<\/p>\n

Ideally.<\/p>\n

That only works if you’re taking part. As a reader, as a blogger, as someone piping up with a comment now and then. And I really have not been doing that. I haven’t even been regularly visiting friends’ blogs or the core blogs I’ve always gravitated to, unless you count the NPR News iPad app. Sure, I’ve been posting regularly as always, but here’s the thing: rather than regular posting being a discipline, a commitment to something I enjoy, it’s become onerous. It’s become work, not play. The posts are there, but I feel like I’m phoning it in. My reviews of books feel dry and listless. The thought of reading blogs feels overwhelming.<\/p>\n

Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I was going through a period of ongoing depression and anxiety for a while. This is just a thing that happens to me every so often. So I was having one of those not-so-pleasant spells, and I was thinking, well, maybe my feelings about blogging are just another symptom of that, just another spindly branch on the dead tree that was my apathy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
FOX owns this image, I’m sure. Please don’t sue me.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

But I’ve mostly gotten past the bad spell for the time being, and I find myself wondering why I still think of blogging as a chore; why, when I think about having to write a post, I feel like Homer Simpson being told he’s supposed to do some household task. <\/p>\n

I think what I need to do is find the love. I’m still going to post regularly on Mondays and Thursdays.  know I will still discuss books and literature and writerly stuff here, and random crap over on my personal blog. I’m just not entirely sure what form it’s going to take. It may just be freeform for a while, until I figure out what works. So, yeah. Just so you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometime over the past year or two, the whole blog thing became a chore. Posting, commenting, writing book reviews, “maintaining an online presence”–it wasn’t…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,10,27,17,73,52],"class_list":["post-718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-af","tag-views","tag-what-we-do","tag-who-we-are","tag-world-o-blogs","tag-writing-daze"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7694,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions\/7694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}