As I'm sure a lot of you know, I took a bit of a hiatus from my blog for August and part of September. I love blogging, but I was starting to feel like I was only posting things because I was 'supposed' to. I had a schedule and, even if I wasn't really happy with my post, it had to go out on a certain day.
I was posting posts because I thought other people would like them and when I didn't get any feedback I'd get disheartened.
Intellectually, I knew that I didn't want to blog for other people. I started my blog because it sounded fun. Because I wanted a place to talk about books and I wanted to make friends that like to read too.
But somewhere along the way, I fell into a rut of 'have to post' instead of 'want to post'. I think, ultimately, this was the biggest contributor of me feeling like I just couldn't post. My ideas were gone, interest wasn't there. I think there was even a feeling of guilt for reading books and not writing reviews for them, which led to me hardly picking up any books.
It took almost three weeks into my hiatus for me to realize this.
I want to blog for myself. Sure, if others like my post or comment on them, that'd be great, but I want to post things that I can be happy with and that I can look back on months later and say 'I'm glad I posted that' instead of 'why did I post that'.
I want my blog to be the kind of blog that I'd choose to visit, a place that I'd like. Somewhere along the line, I think I forgot that. I started posting things because it was expected of me and it felt like something I was supposed to do. (I have some posts that I am very unhappy with that I've posted in the last six months.)
I started to get into a rut of need to post/have to post and I wasn't even staying true to myself enough. I was writing features for things I really didn't care about and I feel that my blog suffered because of it.
I don't know what that's going to mean for my blog going forward. A few things will change, and I will be doing features and posts that make me happy and, hopefully, you'll all be happy with it too.
Because for me, the only obligation I want to feel with this blog is to myself.
Have you ever experienced anything like this?
