Is Blog Envy Killing Your Blog?

But I want to earn that. I don’t want to by popularity. We’re not the Yankees. We don’t use our enormous payroll to buy championships. We earn them.”

Some days the words flow easily and some days they don’t.

Today has been one of those days where it is a battle to bring the words.  My best advice for moments like this isn’t the same for everyone and every moment.

Sometimes I’ll tell you to walk away and clear your head and sometimes I’ll tell you that you need to dig in.

Walking away to clear your head isn’t a bad way to go, but it doesn’t help you tell your inner critic to STFU. It doesn’t help you develop the discipline to create when you don’t feel like creating either.

Is Blog Envy Killing Your Blog?

“This joint has moments of brilliance and moments of mediocrity. Over time it has developed a respectable following. I won’t deny that I think it would be great to have six times as many uniques and ten times the number of comments. It would be great.

But I want to earn that. I don’t want to buy popularity. We’re not the Yankees. We don’t use our enormous payroll to buy championships. We earn them.

One thing ten years of blogging has taught me is I am not immune to feeling envy. I am not immune to wishing I had what someone else does or thinking they got it and didn’t earn it.

Those ideas flow through my mind from time to time.

The words in the blockquote above are my own. I wrote them five or six years ago during one of those moments when I was frustrated because I wanted to center myself

So today I am sharing them with you because blog envy can kill your blog and because I need the reminder today. It is an easy trap to fall into, that feeling of frustrating that others are better and you just aren’t getting it done.

I don’t want people to read my words because I run the best contest and giveaways. I want them hear because they find meaning in what I write, because they relate and because they enjoy it.

Write For Yourself

If you write for yourself, if you write things that are interesting and entertaining you will entertain your reader and stimulate your interest in writing.

Others disagree with this advice. Others will tell you that if you are writing online it is because you want to be read and you should strive to entertain them.

I disagree.

Writing for yourself is like being yourself in person. It is like your parents telling you to be yourself and that you will find friends who like you because you are you and not because you are pretending to be someone else.

It is easier to be yourself. It is easier to write for yourself.

Prime the Pump

Sometimes these moments where I tell you about the words not flowing are important because they are how I prime the pump, they are how I find my way back to making the words flow from my fingertips.

Things are flowing now so I have to go now, but I will be back.

See you in the comments.