Is it time to give up blogging?

Hello, it’s me.

Or is it?

I’m having a bit of an identity problem here at Glen’s Life. I’m having a bit of a mid-blog crisis.

Before I went away on my family holiday last week, I was feeling low.

I was suffering from a lack of confidence. 

To be honest – I was beat. I was ready to quit.

Since I began pushing myself a little firmer into fiction (which is what I love doing the most) I’ve noticed, well to put it bluntly, that you lot don’t seem bothered.

I can’t really put my finger on the trouble but comments are just getting rarer and rarer, and that hurts.

It shouldn’t.

I know it shouldn’t – I can’t justify this next statement at all, but I’m about to say it anyway. You look on other people’s blogs and they write – “Hey I’m wearing jeans today” and within twenty minutes they have thirty comments saying how great wearing jeans is. Whereas I am putting a lot of effort in here, taking days to write stories or hours to write an article, pouring myself into the post, and then I fight for maybe one or two comments

It gets you down after a while, rocks your confidence. So, in a strop I spent 30 seconds downloading a picture of a cat and huffed off on holiday for a week.

My wife asked me why I was bothered about that – what was it that I was trying to do. Was I writing for comments or writing for me?

It was a good question – and one I couldn’t answer without contradicting myself. You see, I am of course writing for me, I love writing; I really kind of need it. But…but… Sometimes I wish people would comment – there I said it.

I write here, I write on In the Powder Room and I write on Real Bloggers United and do you know the one thing that is common between all three sites? Barely any comments, that’s what. 

Don’t get me wrong – lovely folk do comment here, and I am grateful for that. No one can read ALL blogs every day, so people come and go. I certainly get that as I can’t possibly read and comment on everyone every day – it’s impossible, I’m also guilty of missing commenting on blogs that I really ought to comment on. 

So I don’t want to sound like I expect miracles. I just had a bit of a confidence wobble that’s all. 

Maybe I’m a bit needy.

Here’s the thing…

I’m never going to be massively popular as a blogger because…

I don’t have a specific genre. Sometimes dad blogger (who refuses to post pictures of his kids) – sometimes husband blogger – sometimes silly – sometimes serious – sometimes social commentator – sometimes fiction writer  - how are readers supposed to know what to expect?

I’m not entirely consistent with quality either – I know this; I often make the mistake of thinking it is more important to post something, rather than post something good.

Some posts can be a bit long.

I’m not endowed with the biggest vocabulary in the land – As my wife has often pointed out, I don’t read enough. She is dead right about that. This is certainly something I have to sort out. But then what do I read? To work that out I need to work out exactly what I want to be, don’t I? My wife thinks I should be reading ‘proper’ books, and again she is right but that won’t help me be a blogger, but reading blogs won’t help me be an author, now will it? 

I can’t decide what I am – see above comment, what am I? What do I want to be?

I’m a little unpredictable on when I post. – Time and time again I hear that being regular with the time and days that you post is important, and time and time again I fail to manage it. Sorry.

There are more reasons, but they all point the fingers of blame in one direction, and one direction only.

Before I went away I was blaming you lot for my lack of comments – and I was absolutely fed up with it.

I was wrong.

The common link between those three arenas, isn’t the lack of comments, it’s me.

I have been doing a lot of thinking and soul searching and have come up with the following decision.

My lack of apparent blogging success isn’t your fault – it’s mine.

I’m not going to change just to solicit comments – but I am going to just keep on practising, improving evolving and learning.

You see, the reason my blog is so erratic in its content is because I’m erratic. This is who I am. Sometimes I’m a father, sometimes I’m a husband, sometimes I’m silly, sometimes I’m serious, sometimes I’m just a bloke, sometimes I want to make things up and write stories. If I knew exactly who I was, or who I wanted to be, then maybe I could reflect that consistency here. But I don’t. So I can’t. 

This blog is called Glen’s Life and that is EXACTLY what you get, warts and all – this place is an echo of the insecurities and over compensating confidence that my life revolves around. Sometimes the post might be a humorous version of an actual event, or it might be something that I’m thinking about doing, or it could just be something of my imagination. Some stuff gets held back, or exaggerated, or improved, but this is exactly how mixed up I am - The key thing is that I just have to get things out of my head and down on virtual paper, whether anyone else is interested or not. I love writing and want to consider myself a writer – either as a successful author, or a paid magazine writer or, dammit, just exactly as I am – a hobbyist blogger! Why not? If that’s all I am and I spend the rest of my time pootling along with a handful of readers spread out across the globe then so be it. At least I am writing – at least some people are reading.

And those few people that are reading are other writers; people who are usually much more successful at blogging than I am, and that is pretty cool.

By the way – if you are a non blogger and you are reading here regularly, please can you let me know? I’d get quite a thrill knowing that a reader was just exactly that – a reader!

As usual I have rambled on for far too long to hold anyone’s attention.

Sorry.

I just wanted to say that, after much consideration, I will be keeping the same basic content style here unchanged, even if that decision alone puts readers off (I’m not precious about this, but where else can I try things out if not on my own blog? If I was writing for other people, or if I was being paid, then I would make whatever changes were needed to make the editor happy, but right here, I’m the boss!) – I will try much, much harder at improving the quality though, and keep one aspect of consistency, which is Friday Fiction, which has to be posted on a Thursday when using the prompt from www.flashfictionfriday I’m afraid – because stories are the thing I enjoy writing most of all. Other days will continue to be a mix of lifestyle posts (my life).

Also, I’m going to try and read more – blogs AND books.

Comment / don’t comment – but please – please – read.