I was unemployed.
While I put in job applications everywhere I could think of, I told people that I was “making money blogging”. Not a lot, but, you know, at least it was gas money! (Ugh.)
I’d sit in Starbucks with my headphones in, watching videos of online self-made blogging gurus who turned their blog into an apparent treasure-trove. Telling me how to pick a niche. How to somehow manipulate people into clicking on a link and then — I still can’t process this — get them to buy that thing while rewarding myself with like $0.40.
It was overwhelming. And it wasn’t fun. Everyone and their mother told me to start an email list. I attached it to my Medium page, telling myself to “write for an audience” and taking all of my queues from exactly what everyone else was doing.
By time I landed a job, something finally started to click.
I quit the theatrics. Instead, I started writing from my heart. Whatever I was feeling. And whatever felt good. I’m not perfect at it, but I changed the whole damn formula.
It feels amazing.
. . .
If you type in “blogging” on Google right now, you will get slapped in the face with a bunch of headlines and YouTube videos just like this:
How to make x a month on your blog.
5 ways to find the perfect niche.
Why you should be blogging x number of times per week.
Do these sound like articles about writing?
No, they’re not.
Because blogging isn’t about writing anymore. It’s about selling you on the idea that your writing should be making you money. That there’s really no point to any of this blogging nonsense if there’s no way to capitalize on it.
And yes, this is technically a Medium blog or whatever. But I’m not interested in technical definitions. So let’s just throw that whole mentality away.
Blogging is now a business and it’s sucked all of the joy out of everything.
You’ll see tons of articles on here that are attached to someone’s business. Their personal brand. A 10-point list that sends brings you to a page where you have to submit your email and bam they go in for the kill.
This is not a fun way to write. Literally not at all. And I wish someone could’ve reached through my computer, grabbed me by the shoulders and shook my naive (somewhat frail) body back and forth to wake me up to it.
The problem with writing to blog and writing to just fucking write is that one is almost always more authentic. You’re just getting raw. It’s coming out of you like lava. You’ve got to get rid of it before it eats you alive. And that resonates with people in a whole different way than a blog.
I see people on here, one after the other, fall into the blogging trap. Letting their writing fall under the weight of trying to fall into the same tired box everyone else is in.
I’ve chosen to write. Not to get claps or sell a book or get people to buy stupid products on Amazon. I just wanna write. And I really wish we’d see a whole lot of that before conforming to the nonsensical, crowded and money-focused world of blogging.
I won’t pick a niche. I’m a complex human who has a lot more to say on things than a small sliver of a specific topic. Whoever convinced you to widdle yourself and your stories down to a “little piece of the market” is absolutely suffocating your writing voice.
Writing, for me, is a holistic practice.
There isn’t anything particularly interesting about many writers.
I often refer to them as the white guy self-help gurus who write like Siri. Or women with wellness blogs who look like they’ve never been stressed out a day in their life. It’s exhaustingly boring. Flavorless. And you don’t really have any idea of who they are as a person.
But you’ll clap for their listicle. Then move on to the next dude pushing out the same recycled content. Never really finding a personal attachment to that writer.
I’m really over that. I’m over blogging. It doesn’t feel good to blog, but it sure as hell feels good to write. And, when you think about it, that’s exactly what it feels like all of this should really be about.
You.
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This post was previously published on The Writing Cooperative and is republished here with permission from the author.
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