987 Critical Challenges Every Blogger Faces

Do you think that lion in the picture above is sad or just contemplating life?

Is he wondering why the King Of The Jungle still has to deal with the ticky-tack challenges and niggling details that crop up and prevent us from enjoying a smooth passage from point A to B?

I’m not a lion so I can’t tell you but I have some experience dealing with some of these issues and even though I am a Taurus that is no bull.

Because when you start delving into becoming The Best Daddy Blogger ever and start looking at how to make your blog into a Blog because you think it can be something more, well you learn a few things.

Hell, the truth is you don’t have to try to make your blog into anything special to understand and appreciate some of the challenges and hiccups that come with this because in many ways it is no different than life in general.

987 Critical Challenges Every Blogger Faces

Some of you might think that is hyperbole and perhaps it is, but there are times when it feels like there are 5 million challenges.

Ask anyone who is self-hosted what happens when there is an outage and customer service at the hosting company isn’t able to provide them with a satisfactory explanation about what is going on.

Or ask them what happens when they run into some other kind of technical issue and they can’t figure out how to fix it because they know there is a problem but can’t figure out how to identify what it is.

Hard to find a solution when you aren’t really sure what is going on.

Sometimes you know what the issue is but you still aren’t sure how to fix things.

but I don’t have links on my blog to most of those posts because many of those bloggers have taken down their blogs.

There was a time when I used to push people to check out my Other Places You Can Find Me page because I had guest posted at around 50 or so different blogs.

I thought highlighting that would help market my work and give something back to those other bloggers by providing them with a good link.

It worked for a while and then someone told me they had come across a bunch of bad links and I discovered a bunch of those bloggers had taken down their blogs or made them private.

Others were still live but the links to my posts were bad so I reached out and asked what had happened.

Some told me they had changed the URLs and some never responded at all. I wasn’t about to yell at them or whine about it so I just took down the links.

It is frustrating because what I really want to do is focus on my writing and becoming a better storyteller.

Isn’t one of the benefits of having children in middle and high school knowing they are responsible kids and you don’t have to worry about them the same way you did when they were infants and toddlers.

It is not like I have to ask them 10,000 times to clean their rooms or do their homework. Right.

Right. 🙂

The last time I changed my theme I did so because I thought it improved the experience for those of you who are kind enough to read my words.

I thought that providing a way to insert bigger pictures would enhance the texture and add layers which would also benefit my ability to tell a story.

Based upon feedback and my experience it seems to have done that quite nicely but it also created a number of technical issues too.

I don’t have time to go through 10,000 posts to make sure all of them work as they should but I do try to do a little bit of work on it each day.

Sometimes I wonder if that means I am not determined to break through the brick walls.

Sometimes I wonder if it is tied into some of the disdain I feel about the need to always get first place.

I am not someone who requires a lot of validation. Doesn’t mean I would be upset if I was named the best whatever because that is always nice, but it is not what makes me wake up and get out of bed.

The Real Question

The real question here isn’t about creating a list of all of the challenges bloggers face and that is not just because list posts are the lazy bloggers ways to create content.

It is about asking what happens when you face one or more of these challenges.

What do you do when you discover your home internet service is down for an extended period (thank you Time Warner) or the kids are screaming while you try to write.

I do my best to look at all in the same terms my good friend Ralph suggests:

“Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson

And then I’ll tell you I’m also known to toss in an extended stream of colorful language.

Sometimes parenting, life and blogging are best described as not being for the faint of heart.

You will be challenged. You will be inspired. You will be angered and exasperated but if you do it right you’ll have a lot of fun too.

• Saved: Blogging, Children, Writing