How to Quit Blogging is a good a title as any. With or without regret is up to the individual blogger.
Most bloggers quit in the first few months without much incident. Chances are no one was reading it any way. The failed experiment is no worse than buying a dress on sale that will never be worn. It’s a different story with successful bloggers.
I expected to write a short piece but Google research led me to a darker place. Namely the mommy blogger in the news for quitting her blog. The rant against mommy bloggers created a firestorm but my intuition felt there was more to the story. Unfortunately, journalists have not done their due diligence or fact-checking, taking the blogger at her word.
To read about the hot mess, scroll down.
To learn about the hazards of blogging, keep reading.
The longer the blogging commitment, the more difficult it is to quit. Since launching Boomer Muse in 2008, I’ve almost quit numerous times but something pulls me back from the brink. God knows it isn’t money.
In the early days, flush with success, I stupidly chose not to monetize. When I finally woke-up, it was too late. I lost all my content, permalinks and most subscribers after a disastrous migration to WordPress. I have years of archived files that are still waiting for when “I have time” to sift through and post from scratch. Who has time? Let alone. for two blogs. Guilty as charged. CatWisdom101.com is my other blog
My optimistic post about rising from the ashes in Aug. 2014 and What I Learned From Six years of Blogging makes me want to cry all over again. For a very smart woman, I’ve made some incredibly stupid mistakes. It remains to be seen whether continuing to blog is another folly.
Three weeks is a long time between posts and There could be plenty of blame to strew about from Mercury in Retrograde a perfect storm of opposing forces. This week gnawed at me in a now or never tirade. My inner banshee, all wild-eyed and unforgiving lashed out. If you don’t post something, (a to-do list, a re-cycled photo quote) anything, it’s game over.
To quit blogging, is to know where your invisible line in the sand is. To know how long is too long in between posts– the point of no return. Another day, week or month? It’s visceral. You’ll know, the same way you know you can’t hold it in any longer and have to pee, right now.
The longer the holding in or on, the more uncomfortable it is. The state of discomfort is motivating. The longer the wait, the worse the discomfort. It’s human nature to want to avoid discomfort but eventually the dam breaks. The question is: what is more motivating? To keep doing something out of habit and gradually wearing out or facing the discomfort head on by taking action. A clean break.
Optimum Blog Quitting Date.
It’s a day between Monday and Sunday but seriously, it’s empowering to decide in advance with a target date the way some do with quitting smoking or losing weight, but only if there is follow-through. The exhilharating relief of a good pee if you will. It’s what the queen of bloggers Heather Armstrong did last year. After 14 years of blogging at Dooce.com she quit, but not for long. We all know how hard it is to lose weight, to stick to a goal with temptations at every corner. In the case of Dooce, the monetized blog (over a million monthly followers) was too tempting not to go back and so she’s back blogging. And why not, it’s her business which her ex now manages to free Ms. Armstrong to do more speaking engagements.
Which brings us back to regret. If blogging no longer brings joy, doesn’t spark the muse, there is no reason to continue. Quit and find something that will. And if your fingers get itchy for blogging again, you can always return like the legions of other quitters. The latest quitter steaming up the Internet is mommy blogger Josie Denise. Her long expletive-laced rant about quitting has been shared thousands of times. She makes pointed but valid points about the industry, but if you really want to quit, quit. Don’t hang around with your pants down. Pee and get off the pot.
From Josie Denise: “You won’t find most of those posts on this blog today. They aren’t gone forever, and I do plan to revive some of them. But for the most part, they are dead and I want them to stay buried forever. Because, like 90% of the fake nonsense I used to share on the internet as a mommy blogger writing about my fake life and oh-so-happy marriage, they are pure bullshit.”
She follows up with an apology post which seems genuine but how can you trust someone who just confessed to faking their readers out by lying? She’s not even married, but posted a biting and brilliant open letter in Feb. 2016 to the father who won’t pay child support. I’ll hazard a guess that’s it’s not all true. I’ll bet you a mountain of Ding Dongs she’ll be back blogging bigger and better than ever. And probably write a book: Confessions of a Lying Bitch of a Mommy Blogger. People love stories of redemption.
My B.S. detector glowed neon green and I paid a visit to Waybackmachine.org and found a post from Josi Denise claiming she lost all the content of her previous blog TheAmericanMama.com just as I had and decided to start a clean slate. Wonderful. Her post about moving back to the midwest as a single mom on food stamps is memoir material. She claims to put the bruises and the past behind her but I’m not buying it.
In Dec. 2015 she writes. “Last week, I quietly killed The American Mama (so, it’s not lost?) These are things I know to be true, and they are real. But something happened when I tried to write under a name that wasn’t mine, and my voice became so superficial, and the things I love became things I loathed and procrastinated. I still certainly write sponsored posts because believe it or not, retweets don’t pay bills but trust me when I say there’s a big difference in a brand sponsoring a true, real story about my life (which is legit and will continue to happen) — and a completely fabricated pile of word vomit with absolutely no soul or personality underneath.”
Where have we heard that before? And she proceeds to write the same fabricated posts until she yanked (safely archived, she says not gone forever) to quit blogging. A leopard does not change their spots. I found some well written older posts confessing to making things up in a pathological sense. She’s honest when she says on Pinterest that she’s a storyteller.
I give her credit for being creative and a good writer/blogger. It can’t be easy being a single 28-year-old mom of three with #4 on the way– not to mention multiple pets including a puppy. Good thing she’s found love again. She claims on Instagram to love the “friend” who gave her roses on Mother’s Day but that friend writes iamjohnparker I love this woman. Happy Mother’s Day @josidenise. Thank you for carrying around another human inside of you. For giving up your body to create our son.
Okay, somebody give this woman a book deal.
“You will get no rant from me about quitting. Oh, dear, there goes my opportunity to pick-up new followers. I promise not to wait three weeks before my next post. And that’s no lie.
What do I want to do right now? I made a photo quote which is my advice to everyone whether you’re a blogger or not.
The world does not another blog but the world does need something unique that only you can offer. Not sure what it is? I have a secret. Your soul knows what it is and can’t wait to tell you, if you are willing to listen.
