How to Talk Yourself Out of Becoming a Blogger

Posted on September 17, 2006

We certainly aren't going to dissuade you from blogging here on Bloggers Blog but we will point out this one how to article. A how to article on Wikihow offers tips for talking yourself out of launching a blog. Here are a couple points from the article.

Write on a regular basis in a text editor instead. If that doesn't satisfy your urge, and you feel that you must post your blog online, then you might just be craving attention and validation--which you'll never truly find in a blog. If you give up on your Wordpad journal after about three days, you'll do the same with a blog that just takes up server space.
Ask yourself if you really have the time to commit to a blog. What about that treehouse you wanted to build? Or the book you wanted to write? Or the car you wanted to fix up? Or the restaurant you wanted to take your significant other to? Or the new career you wanted to pursue? Instead of writing about pretty much nothing, or whining about all the things you wish you were doing instead, start doing something that'd actually be worth writing about. And if it's really worth writing about, you'll be having too much fun doing it to tear yourself away from it.

The article also contains some blog pessimism.

Consider that your voice, even if it is truly a good one, is a tiny peep against the massive wave of tripe out there. The odds of anyone you don't already know finding your blog are low.

This is overly pessimistic because if you do blog daily for a few weeks or more you can almost guarantee that someone you don't know will read your blog. You will be even more likely to get people you don't know to read your blog if you include links to other blogs in your post and you submit your blog to the blog search engines and blog directories. However, it is difficult to get lots of people you don't know to read your blog.

The article did seem to leave out one tempting dissuading concept -- if you don't blog you can just enjoy life as a blog reader and let everyone else do the hard blogging work. The article ends on this note that may encourage some to give blogging a shot.

"You may never know if you enjoy blogging unless you try it."

This is true. If you never start a blog you might miss out on something that you would have really enjoyed.