Fleagle craning over her shoulder to see if Martin is filling the food bowls
Regular blogging can take a sizeable chunk of your life, and I've been doing it for nearly six years now. My recent six months break from blogging gave me some much needed perspective in my life. It made me realise it has played a sizeble role in my life over the years but sometimes not always as a force for good. The are things I have and haven't done becuase of the blog. Sounds odd I know but hear me out.
I had stopped focusing on my goals and projects
I didn't realise until I stopped posting that blogging was becoming an obstacle to maintaining my focus on my own goals and projects. A few months ago there was a thought that would run parallel to everything I did, which was "Could that go on the blog?" I was never fully immersed or focused on what I was doing because suddenly I would think "Woah there. Stop and take a picture of that for the blog." I'd be constructing the post in my head rather than paying attention to what I was doing. In short, the blog was running me instead of me running the blog.
Blogging was time consuming even when I wasn't blogging
I reclaimed several hours a week besides the actual time I spent blogging. Why? Because I was doing things to put on the blog instead of allowing the blog to reflect my life's journey. I was doing things I thought you guys would want to read, instead of doing them for myself. Once I stopped publishing posts and started getting immersed in projects I wanted to do, I wasn't sure what to say or how to say it, hence the 43 unfinished and unpublished posts.
It occupied a surprising amount of brain space
Without my daily thoughts about blogging, my mind was much clearer and more focused. I got up and just got on with things. I didn't feel I had to write a blog analysing it to the nth degree or explaining why I did something/was going to do something. I didn't stop and think "how will that come across?"
When I took a picture, it was always for the blog
Self explanatory really. Photography had ceased to be satisfying unless it was going to be used for blogging. Now I have a bank of pictures separate to the blog that are my personal memories and a record of things I've experienced since June, and they are for enjoyment, not blogging.
I always felt under scrutiny
Silly really, as a blog is a place where you invite everyone into your life. When you put yourself out there on the internet, you will attract scrutiny. From your choice of words in the post to the background decor in your images, everything seems to attracts scrutiny and judgement, and it's unpleasant.
I once read a post on a blog where a reader commented that the blogger's choice of lightshade to complete a newly furnished bedroom "hideous". I'll admit, I thought the lightshade a bit odd, but then each to their own and it's none of my business. However, I would never, ever comment on someone's blog that I thought something they owned was hideous.
Anyway, the point is I always felt I was hovering at DEFCON 4 - a higher state of readiness - for something I hadn't spotted to be pointed out and be judged on, and it's exhausting maintaining that readiness. That's why I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account. I couldn't take the pressure - I'd reach DEFCON 2 within seconds and spontaneously combust.
So that's what I learnt about blogging and how it affects me. I flirted with the idea of not coming back. I also flirted with the idea of starting a new anonymous blog where I wasn't known. Why? Because I could be honest. When people you know are reading your blog you don't write what you really want to. I think I made a mistake many years ago telling people I knew about this place. Instead of being somewhere I can freely put myself on a page, it's become somewhere a shadow of me puts a constrained version of herself on a page and that's not very fulfilling. I've reached the point in my life where I want to be known and understood for who I really am without worrying about what people think of me, yet when I think about doing it here - on this blog -the worry is there and very strong.
Maybe I'm not the person you all think I am.