I had a sort of epiphany last night. Blogging really is a bit like high school. If you let it be.
I don’t have super fond memories of high school. In fact, I’m not proud of a good majority of my actions during those 4 years of my life. To be honest, I wish I had a worse memory…. But I digress.
In the blogging world, like in high school, one day you can feel pretty cool. The next day you can feel totally snubbed and alone. If you focus too much on numbers, and views, and comments, and just plain feeling popular, you won’t enjoy blogging. I know, because I did just that. You can let the drama get to you. You can get wrapped up in it, and just lose the joy.
In my first year of blogging, I tried so hard to be “friends” with “those” bloggers. You know, the ones everyone loves…. The ones who charge big bucks to advertise on their blog. I offered up items for giveaways and would quickly watch my “likes” and “followers” go right back down after the winner was announced. Where’s the fun in that? I wasn't having fun anymore.
I honestly got a little jaded about blogging and maybe I still am a bit. Pardon me here, but when I see a “pin” on Pinterest from one of “those” bloggers for a tutorial my three year old could accomplish with her eyes closed without said tutorial, and then see the stellar response they get for it, it bugs me. Seriously! Then I see other small blogs where the writers are genuine. They put so much work into their posts and no one seems to read it, or comment, or respond. And it makes me think…. Those are the kind of blogs I want to read. My time is valuable – I want to read something heartfelt or informative or humorous.
I had to put blogging into perspective and blog for me. About what I want, when I want. I no longer follow a lot of the “popular” blogs because it just plain annoys me. And I get headaches from rolling my eyes. I kid, I kid, well sort of.
I do follow quite a few still some have a lot of followers and some have just a handful, but they aren’t the blogs filled with blog hops and twitter parties, and fluff.
The best way that blogging is like high school, is that sometimes, you meet some really cool people. And sometimes they are super sweet and write wonderful posts about you, without even telling you… like Jeni did yesterday
here.
Isn’t she super sweet? Made my day.