A reflection on blogging

A lot’s happened for me in 2014, although you wouldn’t necessarily know it looking at this blog. Things have been relatively quiet here of late!

Tumbleweed (Source: Wikimedia commons)
Tumbleweed (Source: Wikimedia commons)

This is reflected by site analytics for this blog, which among other things show that only two blog posts from this year were in the top 10 most-viewed pages. (FYI they were October’s piece on The Language of Objects and May’s piece on What do museum visitors think science is?). The most popular posts overall remain ones on visitor statistics and exhibition costs. Even though they are a few years old now, they are obviously topics of perennial interest.

Overall, I only posted 22 times this year compared to 33 posts in 2013. This didn’t have a dramatic effect on overall site traffic though, since most people seem to come to this blog via google searches rather than via links to new content or social media shares (Is this normal for a blog? I have no idea . . . )

Anyway, why so quiet this year?

One possible reason is content exhaustion: I started blogging in 2010, and while it took me a little while to find my voice, I probably felt like I had more to say in the early days – especially when I was first getting across the visitor studies literature in the early days of my PhD. Now, I find it harder and harder to find new things to write about (and am in awe of people like Nina Simon who has been able to punch out a post a week on Museum Two for years!). It makes me wonder whether there is a natural life cycle for most blogs, and this one may be coming to its end (I hope not, but I have to think about that possibility).

Another reason is that my writerly efforts have definitely been focused elsewhere this year: I wrote up my PhD thesis, submitted it for both internal and external examination, made changes as appropriate along the way and am now waiting for the final changes to be signed off by the Grad School, the last hurdle before they confer my degree. A lot of the time, if I wasn’t working on my thesis, I really wasn’t feeling much like doing any other writing!

Finally, just as there are only so many hours in the day, brain space is a finite quantity too. I’ve come to the (possibly late) realisation that “busyness” is not always best quantified in terms of hours worked, and might better be measured in terms of cognitive load. For instance, If I quantified my year purely in terms of hours spent at the desk, it wouldn’t seem all that bad. In fact I’ve been feeling quite guilty about how worn out I’ve been feeling given I hadn’t been working particularly long hours. But then again, other things have been going on – I’ve been making the transition from student to consultant, setting up the interactivate consultancy in June and rebuilding a client base. On the personal front, I got married in April, and even the simplest of weddings requires organisation, planning and thus brain space. We also had minor renovations happening for most of the year, and although we weren’t doing the actual work we still had to check on contractors, make design decisions, and lots of little things that also take up brain space.

I’m not 100% sure what 2015 will hold for me yet . . . but more on that in the New Year.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from fellow bloggers about how you manage the ebbs and flows of your ideas and creative capacity.

7 Replies to “A reflection on blogging”

  1. The reasons I don’t blog are similar to those you’ve outlined above. I am always lagging behind in my work for SHP and now I have started a PhD, too. I decided to devote my time to these two time-suckers above rather than blogging, although I look forward perhaps to beginning blog after the PhD is completed. I also want to say something useful – I always found your blog really interesting and relevant – but that would require more time that I have allocated for work. So, I have decided my spare time is best spent with my pets, friends and family – and taking holidays. Life’s too short to work all the time! Thank you for your great blog and please keep going if you can.

  2. I came here through Twitter to weigh in on the issue.

    I know what you mean by blog ideas ebbing and flowing. I’ve had several blogs over the years, and somehow the enthusiasm to keep writing would inevitably peter out, every time.

    Hence I took a bit of an extreme approach and started a blog with the goal to write a post every. single. day. For a year (I’m on day 137 right now).

    My primary occupation is writing, though, so it kinda makes sense to kick myself into action like this. But even if you don’t want to go crazy like I did, a posting schedule can help. If you set a blog post a week as your goal, then a lot of the obstacles – finding time, finding inspiration – can become obsolete, because you now have a looming external motivator, a deadline. Over time opening the blank page and just writing becomes easier and easier. It’s easy to find excuses not to write, and it’s perfectly ok not to blog, too. But if you want to write more, there are ways to force yourself. Even with a job and all those other things in the way 🙂

  3. First, congratulations! It has been quite a year for you.

    Second – thank you for this post – it’s nice to know one has company in the challenge to turn out blog posts. Like you, I am in awe of Nina Simon – how does she do it? And I particularly appreciate your comment about brain space. It’s one thing to carve out time, but if your brain is overworked with other things, that’s its own challenge.

  4. Thanks for all your comments – it’s nice to hear words of support and hear I’m not alone! It must be the season for reflecting on blogging practice, with Nina’s latest post also reflecting on the life cycle of her own blog: http://museumtwo.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/what-you-lose-when-you-become-embedded.html She has found that as her blog has gained popularity, engagement has dropped off. Meanwhile I have the opposite problem and wonder if I’m whistling in the wind sometimes. But I like Signe’s suggestion about setting a specific target for blogging more regularly – daily might be a bit much, but maybe I should aim for 50 posts in 2015 as a manageable target to give things a shot in the arm?

    1. I definitely find it both useful and challenging to set a blog schedule (I’m currently at once a week but was once at 3x per week!). If I didn’t have that consistency, I’d probably fade out. On the other hand, I too feel burned out on blogging often, and between work and family feel like my time is as squeezed as a hamster in a sweaty kid’s hand.

      For me, blogging is a learning space and an incredible link to the museum world. When I was consulting, it also generated/supported business development. I’m afraid to let go of something that has been really identity-forming for me. So far, the value outweighs the pain… But that doesn’t mean there isn’t pain.

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