The Time Suck That is Blogging

As the last day I'll post something for the #SummerBlogSocial, I chose to do prompt #12, which asks, as you reflect back on your time blogging, tweeting and Facebooking, what has surprised you most?


Ahh, blogging.  It's been an amazing 3-4 months.  But looking back, I've gotta say I'm surprised about how much of a time suck the entire process was.

It started with dreaming up a topic, something that would serve as the foundation for the entire blog.  Then, I started thinking about how to designing a look/brand.  Then, thinking up a post, deciding the correct angle to discuss that post, creating that post, and finally making sure people come to see what you've written, which includes commenting, promoting, and branding.

While each post might take less than 30 minutes to write, the entire blogging experience eats on average three or four hours of my day.  Which, at the starting block, I definitely never had expected.  And please don't take that as a complaint - I love every second of it.  


I spend time reading other's blogs, and commenting, tweeting (when I've got something to say), but I think the most dangerous and expansive time suck is dreaming - dreaming about what I want to do with the whole thing.  


In my mind, I've created a structure, a town, no - a city-state, psh, a WHOLE COUNTRY, all built around the idea of a visual representation of every connection that happens on my neural network, plastered onto the internet so as to keep record of it all so it doesn't tumble out of my head like I'm trying to catch a bowl of jello with my hands that some punk poured out of the third story window.  In my brain, I've got a website with travel recommendations, business ideas, investment choices and tutorials, silly vlogs where I make an ass out of myself while learning how to cook insanely difficult meals, humerous short stories, short biographies that I've written more as a way to learn how to write than anything else, political manifestos, societal commentaries, novels, book reviews, film critiques, gardening suggestions, poetry, essays, apostrophes, screenplays, and cartoons.


These are the dreams that take up at least a sixth of my day, but like I said - I'm not complaining.  I love this.  I love blogging.  If I could figure out a way to get paid a decent salary for this, I'd quit my real job in a heartbeat and work full time at interacting with the blogging community.


In the end, this is what surprised me the absolute most: that while so much of my day is devoted to something I previously found so intangible and silly, I've now discovered just how awesome this intangible and silly thing could really be.