I was on vacation last week and it almost pushed me to quit blogging. It’s not even the blogging portion that I didn’t want to do anymore, in fact I actually enjoy the writing portion of blogging. I find it almost therapeutic at times. It allows me to get things off my chest in a manner that I normally wouldn’t.
What I really wanted to quit was the whole social media part. Posting to Instagram, liking and commenting on the photos, posting and sharing things on Facebook, tweeting and retweeting. I have said to others before, that keeping up my social media portion sometimes feels like another full time job. We’ve all read articles about how important it is to be engaged with your followers to gain momentum with your blog. But this week, I just wanted to enjoy my time off with my son.
I am not going to lie, the few days leading up to my holidays I truly stressed about it. I wondered how I was going to fit in checking Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and yet not take time away from enjoying every minute with my son. The only option I could think of was quit. Give it all up, walk away, I quit. Yes, I sound a little bit dramatic about the whole situation but it seems like it is constantly drilled into our heads that in order to keep our social presence relevant, we need to be active every single day and sometimes multiple times a day.
After a few days, and some pondering and considerations, I realized that the world was not going to end if I didn’t keep up with posting. If I lost some followers, life will go on. As much as I enjoy blogging and definitely want to grow my blog, I am pretty sure isn’t something that will allow me to leave my full time job. And truth be told, I don’t know if I would want it to be. Last summer when I was very, very new to blogging, I took a social media break and lived to tell the tale so there was no reason I couldn’t do it again.
I have to say it was quite liberating. Sure, I still looked at Instagram and Facebook from time to time but as a general user, not as a blogger keeping up. But I didn’t feel any pressure to post anything blog related. Even now that I am back to work and “blogging”, I am still not keeping up like I used to. Is this going to hurt me going forward, I don’t know. But what I do know is that my time with my son is much more important to me.
I have seen other bloggers recently talking about the same thing. And I wonder, is it because it is summer and everyone just wanting to take advantage of the warm weather and not stuck to their phones? Or have bloggers in general just decided it’s too much all the time? For me, I think it is a combination of both. So for now, if I am not as active on my social media, I will deal with the ramifications of it when the time comes.
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