If You’ve Ever Wondered If You Should Keep Writing Your Blog…
We have all thought about simply deleting these spaces we create. It’s not even in a particularly terrible moment, where the desire to walk away from blogging is understandable. It comes in quiet moments, where we wonder what the point is of posting our thoughts online and taking that risk, using that time, plugging into that community. We could just as easily write in a private journal. Which would mean that we could record our life without considering how often we’re posting, or looking at our stats.
I think about it sometimes, so I know that you think about it sometimes. And some of us do it; simply walk away from the blog and leave it collecting dust, or delete it, or shut it down to invite-only and then never give anyone beyond ourselves the ability to read. We’ve thought about doing it ourselves and we’ve had it happen to us: that blog you loved reading that suddenly disappeared or the writer who stopped posting.
And we know how it feels when it happens to us, so we try not to do it to anyone else.
Of course, sometimes that reasoning simply isn’t enough.
I love Andrea Ross’s thoughts on what we believe to be irrelevance when it comes to blogs. I got to participate in her project a few years ago, and though I didn’t tell her at the time, because I’m not sure I even realized it consciously at the time, is that speaking about Norton Juster’s book connected me to why I wrote. It is perhaps what gets me over those thoughts when I consider walking away from this space. This was my contribution to Just One More Book Please:
[audio:https://www.stirrup-queens.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/just.mp3]
And Andrea Ross contesting irrelevance.
I put this up because it reminded me how we need to tell people how much their blog means–and we don’t even need to do this directly; we can do this through our actions of reading and commenting and linking. All of it gets the point across. Because the reality is that no blog is irrelevant, just as no life is irrelavant. The entire blogosphere changes any time a new blog enters or an old blog leaves. And my life is a better place because I’m connected to all of you through words.
49 comments
Good timing, Mel. I’ve been wondering WHERE everyone is lately and been feeling terribly neglected. 😉
thank you for writing this. lately i have not been writing in “my” blog as much. i’ve been spending more time writing on my daughter’s baby blog. it’s just where i am these days, emotionally. but then comes a night, like tonight, when i just had stuff i needed to say, and i knew where to come where i could say it, and feel no remorse.
I have struggled with the in ability to find support in my blog.. I have thought who would miss me if I left.. But then I realized that if my story could touch one life one women who is dealing with the things that I dealt with maybe she could find strength through me then it is worth it.
You have enriched my life with your words. I would feel as if a light had gone out in my life if your Stirrup Queens blog ceased to exist. I am certain there are hundreds, no thousands, of readers who feel the same.
I agree with Jen. During my first IVF I received so many comments of support and love. But lately I haven’t gotten anything. I wondered if it was the fact that my blog was “boring” due to nothing going on in the baby-making scene or that no one could connect with me and what was going on in my life. So I made the conscious effort to reach out to other blogs and comment on their thoughts more often than I used to, in the hopes that they would return the favor. Still nothing. So I’m left feeling confused and neglected but I push forward and continue to write, mostly because I want to log my thoughts and be able to go back and read through them years from now.
I agree on the good timing. It seems like there might be a lot of us going through a lull.
Beautifully articulated. Thanks for this.
It’s hard not to feel like you’re not “just another blog” out there when there are so many … but you’re right, every voice is different. Some of us are probably harder to find than others, but I love it when I have “followers” … when it feels like I matter to people.
Wow, thank you for posting this. Although I find it hard to blog and put my most protected thoughts and feelings out there, my heart just feels so connected to the people who read my blog and vice versa. I have questioned many times whether I should continue writing or not, and then out of nowhere I will get a comment on one of my posts that just makes it all worth while. It’s funny how it only takes one person to hold you up during the most difficult hours.
This post of yours is greatly appreciated by me!
I love youe blog and I am just trying to enter this whole blogging world myself! I enjoy reading updates! Higs!
This really lifted me. Thank you for sharing it.
I haven’t yet been tempted to remove my blog completely, but — even three years into keeping my blog — I STILL struggle with that pang of “should I have posted that?!” almost every time I hit “Publish”. I am always so scared I’ve offended someone, or went too far or got too ugly or revealing. With these topics — infertility, loss, motherhood, etc — it’s such sensitive, personal territory. I never know where someone else might be coming from.
But yeah, ultimately, I am so grateful we’re all out there with all our unique voices. Just wish I felt a little more confident in my “right” to always sing my own particular song.
I love your blog! And it’s been wonderful to find such an interconnected community of people who are struggling with similar issues.
I started my blog to help others who lose babies to umbilical cord pathology find information about it. But actually my blog has been a great help for me, as I’ve found lots of great people and been able to “talk” about things that most people in my life just don’t want to hear.
Mel – I know where you are coming from. There seems to be so many bloggers I have followed who have disappeared, well changed, I guess, and have disappeared in the process. I am talking about my beloveds who have either stopped blogging, or their wonderful blogs have changed because they’ve either had their babies or become pregnant. It sounds so petty, I know, but don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t be happier for them. On days like some days though, when every person at the grocery market is either pregnant or cooing at their newborn, I miss them. These are the worst of days when I fantasise that one of those mothers will for some reason come to me and say she doesn’t want her baby, and she somehow knows I am the right mother for him or her. Craziness, right?
I don’t think that anyone reads my blog; I’ve yet to come out about blogging, and I pretend that someone might be there, but this is good enough for me for now. I am not a social person by nature, so lurking and not really being social in this space is maybe just an extension of myself and my own social insecurities. Maybe I am just playing hard to get and want someone to find my blog for honest reasons, rather than by me reaching out. In a way, I’m not really there, but I feel I can be.
I have read your blog for a long time now, read your book, love the stories about the twins, the advice, humour, and all of it. I have commented a few times; lame, perhaps.
But, I would really miss you, Mel. I hope this post is not a note of things to come.
All the best wishes,
Brid
xo
I cannot imagine how voiceless I would feel had I not found StirrupQueens. You mean at least as much to me as Norton Juster means to you.
Except that I get much more than tea.
Oh my, I’ve read, and cried over, and loved, and been touched by, and informed by, and comforted by SO MANY blogs. A decent handful of them are no longer active, but reading back through the stories, the hope, the heartache, the love – it helped me find my own words to describe my own story. Other blogs are active, and I went back and read from start to finnish. Old Stirrup Queen projects kept me captivated for hours, for days and weeks really. The support that I get on my blog feel SO good, but the support I get by reading what others has written is, like, indescribable, in a comforting and supportive way I just don’t have words to describe. I feel like I’ve found a gold mine here and I am so grateful to each and every one of you who so bravely opens you heart and bears your soul here. I try to comment, so you know that I’ve been by, but am not always in a space, emotional or otherwise, to leave that breadcrumb for you. My journey is different because of this community. I am different. and I thank you.
I’ve been through a few months where my blog felt irrelevant to ME, where I just didn’t feel like there was anything I felt like writing about. So finally I just wrote about that, which I thought was super boring, and then kind of summarized some things I’ve been up to lately. I’m not sure that served any useful purposeful other than to get me writing again, not that I consider myself a writer who needs to write. I’m not sure why I do it anymore.
I guess if a blog is officially ending it is polite to announce that fact, although some people just suddenly stop one day and never do it again, and other people take all their posts down with or without announcing it to their readers, or they go private. I always wonder about the circumstances that lead to different ways of ending a blog. Some people do seem to include in their announcement their disappointment over a lack of comments or readers or the low proportion of comments to readers. That always makes me feel guilty and I wonder if they would have kept writing if only I had commented more. But then I realize that it’s not just me. Fortunately we can all go out and find new blogs to read when our favorites end or go dormant.
I’m fairly certain that people would don torches and hunt you down if you decided to close up shop on your blog. I’ve always described it as The Center of the IF Universe and the gaping hole that would be left if you bowed out is indescribable. No pressure or anything, I’m just sayin’. 🙂
As for *my* blog? Ha. I haven’t posted there in over 3 months. That’s shocking when I realize that because I compose posts in my head all. day. long. Every day. I don’t know if it’s the cathartic act of organizing the thoughts in my head that staves off the burning desire to get it out in print, or if it is the fact that I am simply so completely overwhelmed with the pace of my life right now that I have trouble finding the time to pee, let alone blather on about nothing on my blog.
I doubt that I’d delete my blog because I still get lots and lots of hits for things like my pee stick pictures and my DHEA rants. But I don’t kid myself into thinking that it serves any meaningful or useful purpose in regards to current postings (be they real or imaginary).
What’s crazy is that I still read 70+ blogs every single day. I keep telling myself that I should just walk away from reading them now that my babymaking days are very, very, very much over. But I simply cannot. I am way too invested in my friends’ lives, trials, tribulations and thoughts. I genuinely care. So now, instead, I just leave epic comments that are longer than most blog postings on one or two blogs a day. (Um, yes. Sort of like this one that’s going on and on.) I definitely used to be much better about being a regular commenter, but now I tend to be a faithful reader (complete with lots and lots of head-nodding because I totally get where my peeps are coming from) and a sporadic commenter.
I keep kidding myself that someday I’ll get back to blogging. But then I realize that I truly don’t have anything useful to say. Or that which I do think is useful would take so long to type out and ramble on about that I determine I don’t have the time to make it happen. A fairly vicious cycle, I know. But welcome to the wunderland that is my mind.
Anyway, when I do post, I get lots of love from my regular readers (90% of whom are IRL TOOTPU friends anyway) and that makes me feel good. But I am also very jealous of you folks that MAKE the time to continue posting — especially folks like Delenn who somehow posts nearly every day about her 2 kids. Then I don’t feel so horrible because Farah was the most notorious supportive, wonderful, generous, amazing and genuine commenter anyone could ask for — and now that she has 2 kids she’s nearly fallen off the face of the Earth. So that helps me not feel like such a selfish, lazy schmuck. 🙂
I haven’t visited this blog in a while. It’s funny. Just tonight I imagined that someday I might want to delete my blog, in which I mostly focus on my health issues, because I was afraid of the impact it might have on my future employment and things like that. What if people think I’m incapable of working? What if they think I’m exaggerating or looking for excuses to get out of work?
Like many, I often feel vulnerable blogging about what’s on my mind, knowing that anyone in the world can see it, wondering what they think of me. It’s strange to reveal aspects of your character and emotions you may not talk about freely with other people. But as you so eloquently put it, what I and other bloggers write matters. It helps people — many have been kind enough to say so.
I think blogs are great for that community, that ability to learn the effect of your blog or to know that at least people are reading it. Some would be disappointed if I stopped blogging or deleted my blog. I know I would be. I enjoy many blogs regularly and I like that I can communicate my enjoyment to them. I like that it probably makes them feel good.
I’ve been blogging for less than a year and writing in diaries for nearly 9 years now. I was attracted to having a public space because I’m a writer and I want an audience, but I also wanted to connect. You are so right: it would be wrong to forge these connections and then break them. If insecurity makes me want to delete, then I can get support from my readers to get me through it.
Actually closing up shop has never occurred to me, partly because the blog documented so much of my journey and partly because of the sense of community that you have built.
What Andrea said was amazing and so so so true! I have never thought about NOT blogging or shutting my space down, ever. Sure I get lazy and my posting/reading/commenting sometimes goes into a lull… But what I have learned, who I have met, connections I have made over the past 4 years has rewarded me more than in any real situations and advice ever has. I am so grateful to people like you Mel who really did spearhead this community and made it easy for so many of to connect to so many others like us. So if I ever feel like I am irrelevant, I know I am not because of so many of you. xoxo
I didn’t like being PWP because I felt like I was missing out on so much out there either via comments ie support or being able to interact freely with other blogs and join into things that were happening set out by you. Although I still haven’t joined in on much at least I know I can if I want to. I also felt like I had let a lot of my readers down and losing so many in the change over who couldn’t continue reading my journey, it wasn’t fair to them.
I always thought the lull in blogging was seasonal. I find that most of the blogs I read are from the USA, so it’s Summer there and in Summer things tend to go quiet when people are out and about enjoying themselves and in winter people tend to stay in and are happy to write more often. Which is disappointing for me because it’s winter here and I just want to stay in and read blogs but there is not much writing happening. I am I imagining this or is it seasonal ?
Great post Mel – and so timely considering the hush in the IF blogosphere lately.
I often think about walking away from my blog. It’s primarily because I find myself being more open and honest than I feel I *should* be, and I’m terrified of having someone “out” me in real life. Basically my blog life and my real life are becoming dangerously close and it’s only a matter of time before they collide … maybe I should take corrective action before that happens?
I write all the things in my blog that I’m too afraid to share or vocalize in my real life. Maybe that makes me a bad blogger, I’m not sure. But from what I see with the WP trends, the posts people tend to gravitate towards are the ones that have my cycle details … especially my IVF cycle details, so at least I know my blog is hopefully helping people even if they aren’t there to read the skinny on my personal life.
And FWIW, I LOVE your blog and I’d be lost if you just closed up shop and moved on to greener pastures.
I think about letting the blog go, primarily because at times I don’t feel I have much left to share. My role now seems to be reading my blogroll and nodding and posting on other blogs. I haven’t deleted it, though, because I usually find something to post over time.
I miss people when they stop blogging . Especially those who are in the same place I’m in – moving on (in some form or another) from infertility without a baby to take home.
yes, sometimes i wonder if anyone is reading my thoughts that i blog about, and then i wonder if i am okay with that, and then after i share my feelings i wish people that read would comment so i don’t feel like i just shared and nobody cared.
but i do enjoy writing and sharing, and i have enjoyed connecting with others in the ALI blogging world. And i hope in some small way my blog can help others along the way.
great timing fo this, because even as my followers grow and I get some more comments I am still just me, not posting a lot, I know how to do NOTHING on my blog for days, BUT I’ve never felt so connected since I really came back for the WHAT IF project…I feel like my village is all around me…and I love it. I know I am blogging because I have to…there are things I have to say…and have to share and have to be there for other people and I’m so glad that feeling found me again, the feeling to talk and connect.
When E and I went on our break last summer. I thought about closing shop. I no longer felt like I was part of the ALI community. In fact, with the fact we are still on hold , I still have those feelings. However, I love the community, the support, and the friends that I have made.
An ICLW Visit from #107 (mfi, speedskating, strength)
liddy @ the unfair struggle
Very well said Mel – there have been many times I have thought of walking away. I particularly feel that when we aren’t going through actual treatment, I have nothing to write about. I think “these people read my blog to read about IF, not about what we did last weekend or how our vacation was”
However, what I have found out is that those that really follow my blog DO care what I did last weekend and how our vacation was. They are there in a way I could have never imagined!
i stopped blogging for the longest time. i didn’t think anyone was reading it and that was fine; i had just blogged to get my verbal diarrhea out for myself. i didn’t think anyone would ever read it. and then, after months of silence on my part, one of my readers posted a comment berating me for leaving them alone. i was stunned that anyone cared about what i had to say and so i kept on keeping on! i’m glad i did. now i have a written record of much of my infertility travails.
i don’t think i ever want to reread any of it but i think one day i’ll give the link to my daughter so that she knows how sought-after she was. it’s her story, too, after all.
I have gone through multiple periods where I have thought about shutting my blog down. Ultimately I just remind myself that I believe there is space for my voice in this community, no matter where I am in my journey.
Thanks for the post. Been wondering where all my bloggy LUV was too…
Wow. You are reading my mind. I went from dozens of comments a day to none after my grand failure on the infertility wheel of fortune. Guess I’m too boring now.
I’ve played around with shutting down my main blog, especially now that I shifted gears to the other one. But just a few days ago, I got the nicest e-mail from a reader that said she really identified with me- my journey and my writing.
It’s so hard to walk away when I get messages like that, even though they are far and few in-between.
Thanks for the reminder that our imprint here in the blogging world sometimes just isn’t obvious to us.
What a well written and poignant post! And I agree that no blog is irrevelant, thanks for reminding me to appreciate my fellow bloggers better because without them, I would be lost.
I am not a blogger but I had my 7 shares of IVF w/no luck and who is currently waiting to adopt. I read alot IF blogs. I do not post, only lurk, but I did want you to know I love to read your blog and have even moved on to learn of new ones from you. I hated it when Naked Ovary went MIA, but it is what it is, don’t be like her, you are great and I enjoy coming here every couple days.
When I started blogging back in February, I had no idea how much I would end up getting out of it. Putting my thoughts out there then receiving support & advice from people who know EXACTLY what I’m feeling…also being opened up to a different point of view than before…it has been so very importnant to me.
Thank you for identifying this!
I don’t think about closing my blog now, but I wonder if a time will come that I will feel so fulfilled that I won’t need to blog anymore! Ha, ha. I doubt it. The thought crosses my mind that I spend more time comforting and being comforted by complete strangers, and less time with my IRL friends. But right now, this is exactly what I need, and what a blessing it is!
Never thought of closing shop, although there are times when I feel I have nothing to write about. Right now, I’m in a lull & it’s partly because of that but also partly because I’m on vacation & time to think & write (on my own blog as well as commenting on others’) is at a premium.
I do understand why people decide to close down their blogs or stop writing, but that doesn’t stop me from missing them when they do.
well said, I totally agree!
ICLW #166 Bethanie
What fantastic timing. I am just about to write a post about how “is there anyone out there?” besides friends in the computer.
A number of real life friends read my blog and all of them almost never comment so it kind of feels like they’re voyeurs into my life and yet never share anything about theirs. Does this make sense?
So a big thank you to you today for telling me I AM NOT ALONE 🙂
This is a beautiful sentiment. This community has meant so much to me and I am grateful every day to have found it and become a part of it over the last few months.
My blog has gone quiet. We hit the end of the assisted conception road and I’ve been faffing around miserably since IVF#5 failed. No stories in my head, just sadness in my heart and I can’t be bothered writing about it. Who knows what will happen.
Hi, I’m Molly and I’m a blog deleter. I started blogging after my IVFs when I was finally pregnant because I had a very high risk pregnancy and I figured it was the right thing to do after a lot of lurking. The IVFs were so hard I just felt like I couldn’t even talk about it but I finally reached a point where I felt like I had to with the high risk experience. Sometimes I have wondered if I didn’t earn the right to be here by not sharing the IVF experience. I didn’t seem to get much of a response but I knew that it would take time because I was new, so I worked on having fun with where I was at and doing things to build the blog. I also knew that it might take longer to find people that were comfortable reading me because I was pregnant. I completely understood that so I knew I had to honor some people’s need to stay away. My tip to anyone not pregnant but trying to get there would be to start blogging now if you even remotely think you might want to because it might make it a lot easier to fit in – sort of like not waiting to rush a sorority until your sophomore year. Reading this over, I think that even though I felt more comfortable with other infertile people I didn’t really belong here but in some people with high risk pregnancy universe. But they were, all, well, fertile so I didn’t belong there either.
After my child was born, I kept blogging and doing the things one is supposed to do to make connections and build one’s blog. When I had a personal crisis several months after my child was born and wrote about it and asked for some advice I had not a single response. It isn’t anyone’s responsibility or obligation to respond to me but it was embarrassing to see the hits rack up with a very plain request for help right there at the top of the page and not a single response. It was like going to a party where there’s no one to talk to – it isn’t anyone’s job to respond to you or to your reaching out to them – but that doesn’t mean you have to stay there. So I deleted. I really like the idea of being able to help just one person with my story even if they don’t talk to me but in the end I needed more not to hang onto a blog that just made me lonely. I still read other people because I don’t want to miss out on that but I read less so I can comment more.
Oh wow did I need that. Because everyday this week I have been like, what am I doing this for?
I’ve definitely thought about walking away from my blog. I mean, who would even notice or care? I can’t say I’ll blog forever, but after reading this post, I know I won’t walk away today.
There was no such thing as blogging when I was first trying to have a baby and miscarrying one after the other, 12 years ago. I still didn’t know the word “blog” by the time I had had one child and found myself no longer able to conceive, 9 years ago. I’m a late bloomer, so it took until December 2008 for me to start my blog, very slowly. I never imagined it would become so much a part of my life. Now, I try to blog daily, but I don’t get too upset if I am away or very busy and miss a few days. Maybe that’s because I still don’t know for sure if anyone reads it regularly or values it.
I have tried to separate myself as a writer who feels a deep, nagging need to write from myself as a blogger who desperately wants some validation in the form of commenters. Sometimes it works and I am philosophical about how many visitors the blog has had, but there is that other bit of me who wants to know I make a difference to someone. Today, for instance, there were 42 visitors to my blog, but NOT ONE commenter. Did they find it boring? Were they offended by my frankness? I do try to keep it real. Is my fertility blog, written from the perspective of a professional, albeit one who has been infertile, not as compelling as the TTC blogs, so fated to be left lonely on the fringe?
I know I can’t be all things to all people. I accept that there will be those who like my blog and those who don’t. But, I realize that it’s because of how much blogging has come to mean to me. I regularly give up several hours of much-needed sleep a night to write, which is why many of my blogs are posted at 1 a.m. I do check my stats and when I have had a particularly unvisited day, I have bad dreams of showing up for a book-signing and sitting alone at a table, waiting for hours with no one showing up.
Until I started doing ICLW, I really had no clue about blog etiquette. I didn’t know I was supposed to answer a comment, or find out what a commenter might be blogging about themselves. I didn’t realize what comments meant to other people, thinking that I was the only insecure one out there. I felt fraudulent, writing about topics such as self-belief, but then believing that maybe no one else appreciated what I had to offer. Ironically, while ICLW and Stirrup Queens have both taught me tons and introduced me to loads of other fantastic bloggers, some of the moments of doubt that have made me wonder if I should keep writing or quit, have come on the last day of ICLW. Often, when I am struggling to make up for any shortfall in my week’s comments and to say something meaningful in each case. I see that someone else’s blog posts have earned them 30 or 40 comments and I have received zero or one comment, I have wondered why I am bothering at all. So far, I have come up with 2 reasons: 1. that writing helps me sort out my thoughts and feelings and 2. that I believe what I have to say could help someone and I have made a commitment to do just that. My blog is my voice. I guess I don’t like only talking to myself.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about whether I want- or need- to keep blogging any more. O often feel like I just don’t have anything clever to say, and the things I once felt passionate about I don’t care about any more.
The vulnerability of being a new blogger and the insecurities that go along with never having more than five followers or writing posts with no comments, are worth it, and make me feel, even if only in a marginal way right now, connected to this community. Having my own blog somehow makes leaving comments feel more like I am really investing in that person’s struggle, not that it gives me IF cred or anything like that, but that I become part of a web that connects people in this community, through my comments, links and posts. And that is really what I am here for, to learn from the experiences of others and to support them in a way that they might then return that support.
Thanks Mel.
I’ve been hoarding this post for a quiet moment, because I knew I really needed to sit with it a while. I was right. I’ve been struggling with what to do with my blog for quite a while now, and one consequence has been almost complete silence, which I dislike. Thank you so much for posting the video and of course for your thoughts, so beautifully expressed. It is hard to feel that connection sometimes, although for me it’s more that I struggle with feeling like I have something to say. And that goes right to the core of some of my deepest issues of worthiness and belief in my own creativity. (Hey, I think I just found a really good reason to keep blogging forever!)
As always, my heart just brims with gratitude for your grounding and creative presence in our community. I wouldn’t be blogging if it weren’t for you and the welcome you extended my way at the very start. Thank you for being you and for doing all you do.
Thanks for sharing my story, Mel. I’m so glad that my own experience is rippling outward to help remind others of the value of their own creative projects.
Be well,
Andrea