Should I Stay Or Should I Go

Should I Stay Or Should I Go

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I hope that I don’t have to introduce this legendary track to anyone, but if you somehow managed to live without knowing it, please press play now. For a while I did not know what should be the title of this post, then while working on it suddenly it started to play on Deezer and I knew that is it. The perfect summary of the struggle of my last two weeks. Hint: this post is not about moving.

As we are getting closer to the end of the year it seems that there are two recurring topics which bloggers write about these days. They are the reflection on the past year and goals for the next one. I am not an exception, these questions dug themselves heavily into my brain. Even some may have noticed that Tuesday I broke my posting schedule for the first time. This has two reasons. For one I was curious how would it affect my OCD 🙂 The other is that I was not sure if I really want to publish this post, but finally decided to do so.

Today I am three months into blogging. It could be “not a big deal” for some of you, but for someone who has a long history of procrastination and giving things up for me, it is a big thing. When I started this hobby I was really curious how long can I get with it. My promise was that I should stick to it for at least a year, but then this reflection season hit me and forced me into the evaluation of the past three months. This process led to the aforementioned question. So, let me share my findings.

The numbers

Some bloggers share these type of reports monthly or quarterly. I did not do it so far because I felt that my numbers are nothing like someone should brag about, but to show the complete picture I decided to share them.

As you can see the results are not stellar, but at least they pretty much align with my marketing efforts. 🙂

The achievements

While I did not have predefined goals about the points in the previous section, I had some less quantitative ones.

  • Keep blogging for at least a year – three months check, so good so far
  • Learn the technical background of blogging – basic level reached
  • Become part of the community – there is space for improvement in terms of activity, but good enough I think
  • Make connections – I got in touch with many wonderful people and even some of my hero bloggers know about my existence, I can say that I am satisfied
  • Appear on RockstarFinance – achieved this, however only made it to the gossip section: HaltCatchFire turns $$$ bloggers into Memes

The struggles

And we finally got to the part which made the title question a consideration at all. As seen in many posts I can only echo the saying “it’s all about time”. I can not say that I was not warned, so please when someone tells you that blogging requires a lot of time believe them. I was told that you should not start a blog if:

  • you are bad at time management/lack of free time – check
  • you have small children in da house – double check
  • won’t do it for free – I am ok with this

My biggest concern is not numbers, achievements, etc, but the feeling that what I produced so far is not the best quality stuff I could provide. When I reread my articles I find them entertaining at most. Have to admit that most of the time I am living from post to post. Was not a single case when I have put together an article in the two hours before publishing. I had two prewritten articles in my buffer when I started and I used both of them so far. So, I have a writing problem…

Same time I am a geeky guy and have to admit that setting up the blog, playing with plugins and testing the performance was one of the funniest things in the whole process. I am more or less satisfied with the current setup, but it has endless possibilities for improvement (and having fun).

The third point here is socializing. I still don’t want to enter into the Facebook world and have no idea what Pinterest and Instagram good for, but I really fell in love with Twitter and would be good to be more active there. The other area is forums where I see a great opportunity for having meaningful conversations with like-minded people.

The decision

I would be a liar if I’d say that quit blogging has not crossed my mind. To be honest, sometimes it seemed the only logical decision. But it does not matter how much I was thinking about it, I just can’t. I have started and quit many things over the years and most of them I did not mind at all. But I have a feeling, a voice inside my head which constantly tells me “do not quit”. Thus, I came to the only viable conclusion. If I want to stay in blogging I have to redesign my process, my habits and the way I handle the things. So, if you were worried until this point, calm down, you won’t losing me. 🙂

In terms of changes stay tuned, I will tell everything next week in my last post of the year. You will be surprised 😉

16 thoughts on “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”

  2. Keep going! Actually I have been thinking about doing one myself since I early retired a couple of years ago. I don’t subscribe much anymore to anybody because the Rockstar Directory is like the perfect RSS feed reader and there isn’t much reason to subscribe to any blogs, just check in at Rockstar to see all the new stuff. I bet that is why you don’t have many email subscribers.

    1. Thank you, Steveark and congrats for retiring early! It is good to know that there are people out there reading what I am writing, so, who cares about subscriptions? 😀 I am using Rockstar Directory myself, so got your point.

  3. Stay stay stay! I need friends with similar situations – kids, living post to post, and geeking out over plug ins and other ways to hack your own blog to death by tinkering.
    Glad you’re in the community – keep up the great work!

  4. You’ve got to do what’s right for yourself, your health, and of course, your family. If the blogging stuff gets to be too much, you can always cut back on your post frequency, Twitter time, etc…

    Stick with it long enough, put it great content, and you’ll find lots of reasons to continue.

    Cheers!
    -PoF

  5. Looking back at my stats and posts, I have similar feelings. I was at 1700 views after 3 months. There have been low months like Jan and July where I only had about 250 views. I’m never sure which posts will be more popular.
    After about a year, I have begun to see a pickup in traffic and have over a 1000 views in Nov and Dec.
    I’ve got 11 email subscribers, and half of them are people I know personally.
    I don’t like to read my old posts because, it makes me want to go back and edit the hell out of them.
    I have enjoyed reading HCF posts, and hope you stick around.

  6. So I was checking out a post by @genymoneyca about the difference in blogging from 2009 to 2017. She admitted to having some relationship difficulties that were blogging related – too much time spent blogging. Some guy named Rob wrote this comment:
    “Simple answer don’t do it. blogging is a time suck which takes all you time, money attention and gives nothing back in return. It was bad in 2008 it’s gotten much worse now with social media. If you’re looking to make a difference in peoples lives join forums dedicated to your interest. Even now 8 years after I stopped blogging I’m still active on many forums. I never read blogs anymore (this one post being the exception – see next my comment).”
    I don’t know the answer. I don’t want to discourage you, because I also like your posts, but I think it’s okay to have doubts about whether blogging makes sense at this time in your life. When my kids were babies and toddlers, I wouldn’t have managed blogging. And if my spouse was doing it, I would have probably killed him. Even now for me, with older more self-sufficient teenagers, some things are falling through the cracks with my blogging time. So, I’m trying to keep my eyes wide open about whether it is a fun, creative outlet or just an unhealthy addiction that messes up my personal life. On that uplifting note…Happy New Year HCF and all the best in 2018 🙂

    1. I agree with you, this was definitely not the optimal period for jumping into blogging, but I did it and now looking forward to making it work somehow. You made me laugh, fortunately when I told about this blog to my wife her reaction was unexpected even to me. She said, “I am so proud of you”. I think this is a great reason to carry on. Thank you, and wishing a very Happy New Year for your family too 🙂

  7. Success (traffic and monetary) will come if you consistently work for it so don’t give up if that’s your goal. But if it isn’t brining you happiness then blogging is too time consuming to grind out. Hope you stick around but do what’s best for you.

    1. Thank you Ty!

      I made my decision to stick around because, however, it would be easier to leave the scene, but the company is too good around here. Instead I reframed my mindset. I don’t really care about the results. I am here to make connections, friendships and to learn more. And of course while on the road, I will share my thoughts, but left strict schedules, I will sound my voice only when I will have something to say. My posting schedule changed to every sometimes 🙂

  8. No no no, you’re a great writer. Just take a break from it. For me, the worst thing I can do is put deadline pressure in the equation. You don’t need to have a set schedule.

    1. That deadline pressure almost killed the thing to me. Then I realized that these deadlines are just made up by me so what’s the point in stressing about them? I try to post something every week now, but if there is a week with two posts or zero it is not the end of the world. I try to focus on the bigger challenge, keeping at it. Thank you for the encouragement, it always lights up my day 🙂

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