Hello,
I'm Mervi Eskelinen!
An artist, nerd and sorcerer, dedicated to make world softer and better for everyone, and to get you to make more art. Make art, change the world!
How to kill your blog with overthinking
If you are a regular in this part of the web you may have noticed a certain decline in amount of blog post here this year and especially through the summer.
I have a "good" reason for it besides of a bad one. The "good" one is that I've been busy with Stylebook. Stylebook was launched during spring and ever since I have spend a lot of any spare time in tweaking the site, creating materials for it, checking comments and all sorts of stuff like that.
As I mentioned above there's been a bad reason too. The usual, I had run out of will to blog. Call it lack of inspiration, call it something else.
I have been overthinking this whole thing. I've tried to create useful blog posts that would help my readers rather than writing for myself. I've tried too hard and thought too much.
If you listen to any advice on how to gain more readers and how to make your blog better, you will start to think too much of it. The most advice basically describes how you must write to your readers, be useful and informative for them. Forget yourself.
Unfortunately because of reading too much of this advice (I don't know why I do it) I started to forget the things blogging has taught me. I was trying way too much to be useful for anyone who has stumbled across this blog and to give them The Information.
This was making me feel pressure about every single word I wrote here. Personal and non-informational posts started to seem like bad blogging. I was running towards a wall while desperately making my blog "better".
In reality many blogs thrive in personal. The personal stuff isn't always written with thinking how it would help the readers. It's written out of a personal need.
Sometimes the personal is most helpful and it's always the most relatable. About a week ago I blogged about how to manage with living in a small home. My point wasn't to be informative or useful, I was just writing about something interesting for myself.
However the post is getting much more hits than some of the recent posts which would seem more informative. Like the one about how Pinterest drives sales and traffic to web stores and blogs.
There are (way too) many blogs giving information of this and that, so many "experts" telling how to live your life, how to become successful, how to this, how to that, and everyone is drowning in information. At the same time the most people really just seek entertainment and love stories.
Same way I have been overthinking my blog, I've been overthinking the photos I post on my Flickr or Instagram accounts. Certain people complain about photos of things like flowers or food or pets. Hey, I like taking photos of flowers and pets!
Trying to please these people who complain about everything and know everything better is futile. You can never please them. It's the path to getting stuck and miserable.
The best way to hurt your creativity is to think too much of it and try too hard. If you want to keep your blog alive and yourself sane, blog about things you care about and things interesting for you.
In time to time, write a poem, or try one of these blog post ideas for showing your personality. Trust me, you'll be happy and by creating content for yourself you will start to create more interesting content for your readers as well.
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