There were three priests, five rabbis and a Buddhist monk and myself standing at the bar in Downtown Los Angeles. We were gathered for the Interfaith Social Media Smackdown and the bar made for a nice place to hang out in between sessions.
It might sound like an odd sort of combination to you, but social media is being used by everyone these days so it made sense for us to schedule a chance to talk about the most effective tools and platforms for the various clergymen to use to look after their respective flocks.
All of that made perfect sense to me. What I couldn’t reconcile was how my ex girlfriend had also dated not just one, but two of the priests. Of course back then the “fathers†hadn’t been pledged to god, but that wasn’t what threw me. What I couldn’t figure out was how I fit in the equation.
How did a nice Jewish girl turn two nice Catholic boys into priests and not have any impact upon me. During two years of dating I might have called out the lord’s name once or twice but it was never tied into a thought about becoming a rabbi.
The Post Really Starts Here
If you have made it this far I must confess that I made up the part about theInterfaith Social Media Smackdown and virtually everything that goes with it.
What I didn’t make up is having spent time in bars with some rabbis and that is because I have friends who are rabbis, but we are not going to talk about that now.
Rather we are going to spend a few moments talking about what happens when you get bored with blogging. It is far more common than many people might realize.
Causes
There are multiple causes for boredom in blogging but I would suspect that most of the time it happens for one of the following reasons:
- You don’t know why you are blogging and consequently you are sort of wandering around the blogosphere without much purpose.
- You have pigeonholed yourself into one niche and reached a point where you can’t come up with new material.
Blogging can be a grind. This is a marathon and not a sprint. The best and most successful bloggers are almost always those who able to sustain their efforts over the long haul.
When you lock yourself into only writing about one small niche and are afraid or unwilling to move from it you have to work harder to maintain your interest level. It doesn’t matter how much you love writing about the great woolly weevil and it’s exceptional weaving because sooner or later you’ll reach saturation and feel like you have said almost all there is to say.
Boredom Is Bad For Your Blog
Boredom is bad for your blog because it impacts your writing and your readers suffer. You won’t always hit a home run with every post but boredom will make it much harder to get a hit.
Part of the reason I mix things up here and get “creative†with headlines is because it helps prevent boredom and because I am ever curious to see what impact my words have.
Sometimes I stir it up just to see who responds to things like How To Use Your Oral Skills To Please Others. A while back I wrote a post called 69 Reasons Why Fathers Make Better Lovers and got a boatload of traffic and emails from it.
It was real engagement and many of the conversations were about social media. I found it to be interesting.
But Does It Add Value
I have to tell you I hate reading 1,933,432 posts about your content must always add value. You must always educate your reader or make them laugh, blah, blah, blah.
I hate it because it leads to sterile posts that have no passion or personality. Sometimes you have to shuck that aside and suggest that the reason the person you are writing about is so uptight is because they haven’t been laid properly in a decade.
Sometimes you need to ask your reader to imagine their grandparents having sex because you need to wake them up. It is not done to disgust them. It is done to make them wake up because they have just read 1,933,432 posts about how to be a better blogger and they are bored.
The Bottom Line
To me the bottom line is simple, have fun. If you have fun with blogging it will come out in your posts and your comments. This is a good thing.
People want to see your personality and to feel your passion. They like being around happy people. Any time you can make people smile and feel good you are providing value that is immeasurable and important.
And now I have to go think about writing more about the Interfaith Social Media Smackdown because that has real potential.
I understand that second reason. It can get real boring really quickly if you don’t have a plethora of things to write about. The key is, as you said, to find something that you enjoy writing about, that way your personality will come out and it will be fun to read.
The number three reason is being naive and thinking that your blog will grow into a stunning success in a few weeks to months, and when it doesn’t you quit.
I always laugh when I hear people buy into the Field of Dreams ‘If you write people will come’ thing. It just seems so ridiculous to me.
Yes, having fun is what it’s all about. I remember how I was feeling when I was having technical problems with my blog, and when I was receiving a lot of spam, I was thinking about just stop blogging. But, when I can focus on writing content and connecting with people, I’m happy. So, when I’m thinking about all the work or spam or whatever that’s negative, I try my best to think about how blogging and writing makes me feel.
I’m doing my best to make it as easy as possible to blog. In the end, I believe being bored with blogging is just a short period, if you really enjoy blogging and you need to find a way to overcome it and start to feel good about it again.
Hi Jens,
I wish I couldn’t relate to the beginning of your comment, but I can. When we are faced with all of the technical challenges and have limited resources to work with it really does suck the joy out of it.
But those moments when we can write and create without the tech issues, those are special and they are what keep me going.
Ultimately, if someone does get bored with blogging, I’d advise them to stop. It is no shame if it is a passing phase. Maybe, they did it, got something out of it and are now ready to move on.
I think you are spot on. It is too much work for people who are bored or are not having fun.