Blogging is weird. Like, I sit here and write whatever I want and people all over the country read it in the internet. It’s weird.
It’s weird that I feel a lot closer to some people who live on the other side of the country or even the world who I’ve never met in person than I do some of my own family and real life friends.
It’s weird that I tell stories and sometimes even pour my heart out to people I’ve never met. And I read the same sorts of things on other blogs from people I’ve never met as well.
Today I thought I’d give you some pros and cons to blogging. There are definitely good and bad things. But I love it and plan to continue blogging for the foreseeable future.
Pros:
Friends/Community. The number one pro, hands down, is the blogging community and the friends I’ve made through this blog. These are people I now talk to every day and I feel like I know them better than almost anyone. Just like in any community, I’ve gravitated to bloggers who share similar values and beliefs as me. We connect through communities like Prayerful Bloggers and The Peony Project. We study together through She Reads Truth and Good Morning Girls. These women have really filled a place in my heart. Especially since I work at home all day by myself. I just can log into my computer and see what they’ve all been up to.
Hobby. After I graduated from college, and once I stopped planning a wedding, I didn’t really have much of a hobby anymore. I had played sports all my life. And I was very involved in my social club at Harding. But once we moved here, I got a little bored. Blogging became that hobby for me. It was something that I really enjoyed and I could see myself getting better at.
Helping others. I’ve always been a lover and a helper. I love using any wisdom I have to help other people in any way possible. Through blogging, I can do that on such a wide scale. Even if I’m not an expert (and I’m not really an expert at anything), I can share my experience and make recommendations about a wide variety of things. That makes me so happy!
Cons:
Time Consuming. Blogging takes time. Especially if you want to be “successful” at it. You have to spend time planning posts, writing posts, taking pictures, editing pictures, maintaining your blog, sharing your content on social media, interacting with your readers, answering comments and emails, reading other blogs and interacting with them. The list goes on. I think I lot of people don’t realize what all goes on behind the scenes. It gets pretty busy and takes up time that I would sometimes like to spend doing other ‘me’ things like reading or journaling.
Pressure/Comparison. The blogging world can put a lot of pressure on you. You’re pressured to publish 5 posts per week. You’re pressured to share those posts on social media and in your communities and on link ups. You’re pressured to get a lot of comments and social interaction and to do whatever you can to get your following numbers up. If you’re not careful, you’ll start comparing yourself to other bloggers. You know what they say, “comparison is the thief of joy.” It’s true. You’ll notice you don’t have as many followers as someone else or you didn’t get as many comments as that girl did when you posted about the same thing. And you start to wonder why. It can be very dangerous and I have to remind myself that I’m only competing with myself and that I’m doing this because I love it.
Everyone knows more about me than I do about them. This phenomenon is sort of intriguing. Sometimes people will come up to me at church and ask me about something that I hardly ever talk about with anybody outside of the blog or Pearson. For example, when I was watching Gilmore Girls people would ask me how far I’ve gotten and stuff when I never remembered talking about it with them before. And then I sometimes feel bad that I don’t know this kind of thing about them.
All in all though, I love blogging. The pros certainly outweigh the cons.
What pros or cons would you add to my list?
Thanks for reading!
