The Blogging Evolution and My Blogging Fatigue

This year has been a stellar year for blogging. Not only has blogging as a medium been embraced, but for some it’s become an important way of life. Not a day goes by where I don’t visit my favorite blogs.

If you think about it, blogging is an amazing media art form. We’ve see both the good and bad side of blogging. Some will take advantage, those who simply pat bloggers on the head, or treat them with disdain, going as far as to take a blogger’s idea and words they claim for their own and think nothing is wrong with it. A perfect example was the whole Cook’s Source controversy where one blogger decided they wouldn’t sit back and be taken advantage of. And because of the lengths and support of the blogging community, many things were brought into the light. Now Cooks Source is no more, and yet, the editor-in chief who blatantly plagiarized the blogger blames her for the magazine’s downfall. Or how another blogger’s photographs were stolen and placed with no byline or payment in a journal. Again that blogger made it point to tell her story publicly and got what she deserved. Bloggers came together to discuss Marie Claire’s Fat Bigotry blog post, as well as what may be the biggest Amazon controversy of the year with the self-published Pedophilia guide. And many stood up and took notice all because of the blogs.

Now more than ever bloggers are being courted and held up to a higher standard. I see this mainly in the publishing world (because I'm so involved in it) from all ends by the publishers and authors who hope a blogger will mention or review a book and the author writing it.

I see how one blogger, who only three years ago, just by posting pictures of celebrities has become a cultural phenomenon. Love him or hate him, Perez Hilton is a blogging role model who has done the impossible where his website, his blog he started from scratch, gets close to 14 million viewers in a month and makes $50,000 a day in ads. Boggles the mind doesn’t it?

There are many other examples of bloggers out there who are making a name for themselves. The competition has become fierce, and a bit frightening if you think about the lengths some people will go to in order to get more traffic for the soul purpose of being mentioned or linked. Perhaps a few are lucky enough to make money off their blog and treat it as a second job and market themselves, including their ideas and their names very well. One such blog (thanks to Smexybooks) I just discovered that is only a little over a year old is Hyperbole and a Half. Run by Allie, she has created an unique blog filled with her own drawings about her life and observations that has close to 60,000 followers. Allie’s latest post had over 2300 comments! Just take a look at Cake Wrecks, Regretsy, My Milk Toof, the list goes on and on. If you come to think of it, there are different levels to blogging and it’s entirely up to that blogger to decide which way they want to go. This is where one must decide if they treat blogging as a hobby or something more and run with it.

I once was told that in order to become something big, you have to have a gimmick. I used to think someone’s gimmick was more along the lines of a person extending their 15 minutes of fame. I’ve decided my words are my gimmick and more so now with the stories I’ve published and that I’m currently working on. The same goes in the posts I create. For some reason a nice amount of people visit here each day to read what I have to say. And that humbles me because half the time I think I make no sense or have no rhyme or reason for what I do.

Who would have thought a stuffed sheep from Bath and Body Works would have a following or the outlandish and shocking things I find on the internet for one of my most beloved weekly posts- my WTFckery, would be talked about and enjoyed by many.

 Lately I’ve been undergoing a sense of blogger fatigue. Not that I’m ready to give up blogging yet by any means, but some days I just find that I don’t have the excitement like I used to. In part this has to do with the amount of hours in the day I’ve been working. Because I’m now more involved with my writing and trying to getting published, I’m consumed by writing the stories that are rolling around in my head. I also have to find a balance because I still have to work in the traditional sense. I literally start my day at six in the morning during the week where I’ll write before work, go to my day job and then come home and write some more. If you clock in my total number of hours I’m working between writing and my day job, I’m working almost 14 hour days. On the weekends I just write and write and write until my eyes go blind.

I used to be consumed this way with blogging. Now in the past few months, not so much. I still update in some form or another every day, but it’s become harder. Maybe I don’t need to update every day. What would be the worst thing that would happen if I didn’t? Actually some days, I wouldn’t mind just posting funny videos and leave it at that.

Blogging is still rewarding up to a point, and I’m not going to lie, but I dream of a day where I could become the next big blog like Perez Hilton. But then again, I have dreams of becoming the next big author. Can I continue to do both without going crazy?

I love to read and write. The written word excites me like no other. And I want to be one who continues to write words that will be read and hopefully reap the rewards from it.

Those who blog, how do you keep a balance? And to those bloggers who find themselves with their own kind of blogger fatigue, how do you get past it? Do you take a break or perhaps give up and move onto something else?

This picture cracked me up as well. Perhaps it's me next to my laptop and my notebook of story ideas?