There has been a lot of buzz lately about Blogging to Death ever since the New York Times wrote about the deaths of high-stress bloggers Sunday. It’s discussed in the recent post here, “Is Blogging Killing You?” There is also a post, “What’s Wrong with the Blogosphere?” at Performancing, where Raj Dash points out:
I find one day’s blogging to be far harder work than producing, say, 1,000 lines of computer code in one day. (The industry standard for programmers used to be about 10 lines of finished code per day.) Each blog post has to be researched, drafted, edited, posted, and sometimes promoted. That takes a lot of time, and current blogging rates really aren’t worth it. But more to the point, it’s not easy coming up with fresh, interesting articles every day. Writing is a creative activity, and we are not creative every day. For this reason, I find myself blogging at odd hours, seven days a week. I’m certain that this is also why so many other bloggers burn the midnight oil.
Blogging is an odd career in a sense, combining the demands of a job at a nonstop news wire or 24-hour news channel with the anti-social issues of working from home and experiencing isolation. Those two factors combine to make it difficult to draw the line between work time and leisure time. There are readers around the clock, and you don’t physically leave your office.
It can strain relationships. Much like spouses of doctors and cops, you can always be “on call” for your blogs.
Shoot, I am working on this post at 11 p.m. on Monday night. What does that tell you? I don’t have to, but I find it easier to finish this the evening before it’s due.
That means it’s all the more important to draw the line between blogging and living. Here are some tips:
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Your last point is so on track. You are so very right. Thanks for the reminder.