I find myself on an unusual side of the ‘Motivation’ conversation at present. When I started Time to Loot, I was posting 3-4 times every week. And I loved it. Despite prior blogging efforts generally dying within the span of a year — I kept this rolling with Time to Loot for three years.
Maybe a bit over three, even.
As it wasn’t until my mother started requiring a high degree of in-home care, which my two siblings and I largely provided, that this pattern fell away. I placed a ‘Semi-Hiatus‘ post up at the time, although from memory the need for care had started at least a couple of weeks prior.
It was just at that point I realised the pace on all fronts couldn’t continue and something would have to give.
As you can see — blogging was a large part of that give. Not only on the posts front, although that impact was also substantial.1 By far the bigger impact though was in comments, and I attribute that to two things.
- The types of posts I was writing didn’t lend themselves to much in the way of conversation.
By which I mean, a lot of the posts I kept up with — and in fact were sometimes the only post for a given month — were the Journals or other posts more for my own benefit than anyone else’s.
I didn’t quite have the drive to talk about topics that might invite discussion, such as whether you can play a game ‘wrong’, whether we might be ‘too old’ to game, or suggesting that perhaps FFXIV may as well have not even been an MMO.
There is a certain energy or drive that goes into these sorts of posts that I was often lacking.
– - I withdrew significantly from the Blogging community
Other than the irregular, infrequent, short bursts of activity I stopped commenting or even reading, much else out there in the Blogosphere.2 My usual social activity went from trickle to absolute desert, and even Discord where I am most comfortable and generally up for a chat… Very little.
Given what was going on, I’m all good to cut myself a little slack on all that. I am.
But…
It has also been over a year since my mum passed, and sure, there are moments — there probably always will be. But day-to-day at least, I’m fine. Yet, outside of Blaugust events, I haven’t quite been able to shake the habits formed over the difficult times.
So I want to explore how to build motivation levels back up to where they need to be.
I might have some ideas on that, but I guess we’ll see! I’ve rather ambitiously called this ‘Part 1’ after all, so let’s hope so.
This was posted during Blaugust 2024, the annual blogging event hosted by Belghast. Blaugust is an event aiming to welcome new blogger blood into the fold and revitalise those who’ve been at it a little longer.
The Blaugust Discord is still available to join in, year-round!
Life sometimes intervenes. Blogging isn’t paying any bills (at least not for me), cleaning up the house, or tending to an ailing loved one. So taking time to focus on those things when the pressure increases makes perfect sense. Blogging can be set aside.
But I know for myself that habits can become negative. A habit of writing a blog entry can easily become a habit of doing anything else besides writing. I can start to convince myself pretty easily that I just don’t have time when what I really don’t have is the ability to get out of the negative habit. I find for me that writing, whether blogging or writing in a private journal, has some mental health benefits so getting out of that habit an be hard on me in the long term.
I hope you find your stride again and that writing becomes ‘easy’ for you once more.
Thanks Kelly,
And I think you pretty well nailed it that it is easy to replace good habits with less good ones, and then convince yourself it’s a ‘time’ thing, which is largely what I have been doing of late.
I think what has kept me going — to any degree — over these patches though has been to set a rather firm boundary line with myself. That sure, I might give myself to slack-off from blogging up to a certain point — but to that point and no further.
‘That point’ for me, being that I continued with the monthly Journal posts, no matter what. I kept that as the absolute minimum bar to cross, as I knew if I let myself slip on that as well, there was a really good chance that I wouldn’t be back.
But that, I think, is largely the content of the next part! Maybe Sunday for that though.
Well, I still say blogosphere… often enough that my tablet’s autocomplete filled it in for me! So there’s at least two of us. Let’s make it happen! 🙂
I’m sorry for your loss, and I know what you mean about the coping habits persisting even after they’re no longer needed. For me, it feels less like lacking motivation and more like having emotionally forgotten what life was like before the loss. Which makes sense, I think: we’re not islands, we’re defined in large part by our important relationships… so after a death or other significant loss, we do have to figure out who we are now.
Good luck / best wishes with that, & I look forward to part 2 when it eventually appears.
Thank-you GT,
I think that’s a pretty good articulation of the issue, regarding coping strategies continuing past the point of their need. Not one I would have landed on myself, and to be honest — did for a few moments disregard. But thinking about it, it does resonate.
There was a period of time when I pulled back from the world at large, outside of a very small bubble of direct family, and this may well have been a part of it.