Eco Lesbo Vego

Aussie ELV gets her Arnie on

July 12, 2009 at 1:22 pm Leave a comment

I would like to make a confession. I forgot my line. It was some line out of a Terminator film. ‘Hasta la vista, baby’? Nope, not that one. Oh yeah, that’s right – it was ‘I’ll be back.’

Arnie says: 'I'll be back.' Sorry I forgot.

Sorry I forgot that. I did just disappear of the face of this blog without so much as a by-your-leave. I apologise. Look, I’ll say it now:

I’ll be back.

Too little, too late huh? Well, how about we start over, with a clean slate? That’s kinda how I’m going to be approaching this blog.

You see, I took an unexpected break because it was break from the blog or break from work, and this blog doesn’t pay me. I was so keen when I started blogging here. This blog was going to be a success, it was going to have a wide-audience, and there would be comments and discussion. It would give me the chance to start writing again, about stuff I was interested in, instead of just reviewing other people’s work (which is what I do for a living). I was going to foster this blogging ecstasy by posting everyday! To help motivate myself, I made categories and set up a schedule. I was going to be in blogging heaven! It was going to be sweet!!

Except it wasn’t. What happened instead was that I burned out. I felt stifled by the categories. Having to write a Spotlight every week was so much work. I found myself looking for easy things to write about, instead of stuff that I was really interested in. The Weekly Round-ups were a repeat of what other sites are already doing, took ages. I doubted myself. I spent more time struggling to write than I did trying new things I could write about, which meant I had nothing to write about, so I spent ages trying to think of something. Can you say Catch 22? Sometimes I struggled to fit what I wanted to write about into the three Rs, so I’d just write about boring stuff. It was hard to find pictures to include, and I had to include them, cos in my mind blogs without pictures are boring. The only thing I liked was Friday Feast, and that’s only because I already had those recipes typed up so it meant a day off. I felt like I was preaching rather than sharing or questioning. My writing felt flat. Discussion didn’t really happen the way I expected it to. I became obsessed with my blog stats. I discovered that roughly the same number of people turned up at the blog whether I wrote that day or not, regardless of what my topic was. More people got to this blog using the terms 90s cartoon and stuffed capsicum than any kind of eco anything. I’m not even going to go into some of the weird search terms that have lead people here. Clearly some people are kooky. My attempts to boost readership only worked temporarily for the particular post I linked to, then my readership would drop sharply again. I only had two people RSS-ing. I felt like a blog-tastic failure.

Basically, it all got too much. Too much pressure, which I put on myself. I’m not blaming anyone else for this. I think I just approached this blog the wrong way. I mean, when you start thinking in terms of taking a day off from something that is supposed to be fun, then you realise you lost the joy somewhere. Eco Lesbo Vego was never supposed to be a chore. I tried slowing down but it didn’t work, so I just had to go cold turkey. Absolute. Complete. Stop.

Lately though, I’ve been missing it (what ‘it’ was supposed to be), so I wanna give Eco Lesbo Vego another try. This time though, things will be a bit different.

• No schedule – I’ll write what I want, when I want
• Categories are ok, but they’ll fit what I write, as opposed to me trying to fit my writing into them
• New categories might pop up to fit new stuff I’m writing about
• No pressure to write every single day
• Write to make myself happy, about topics that interest me
• Write when I have time
• No such thing as a day off – blogging will no longer be a chore!
• Only check my blog stats once a day at maximum (preferrably less often – and yes, this should indicate how obsessed I was getting)
• Weekly Round-up will be less structured, less news obsessed, and might disappear altogether… we’ll see
• Maybe the blog will end up more lesbo and vego, instead of mostly eco – but it will all still be related to the environment. But don’t blame me if the odd picture of Marlee Matlin, Lucy Lawless or Jennifer Beals recycling or digging in their garden occasionally appears…
• Less obsession with building readership
• More time doing new stuff, rather than writing about it.

So that’s my new deal with myself. I guess we’ll see how it works out.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who did check in on the blog regularly, comment and was generally supportive. Without you guys, I would have burned out way earlier. I really appreciate your support and hope you’ll give this gig another chance!

Entry filed under: Administrative. Tags: blogging.