Kinda sucks hitting an unprecedented hiatus just after my one year mark. Didn’t realize I had too much on my plate (college stuff wise) when I did, plus the fact that my laptop wigged out on me kinda made it hard to manage both my school work and this blog. I guess it was a good thing I swore off the episodic posting for a while ’cause if I didn’t I’d be way way behind, lol. I do feel bad about going off the ani-blog radar these past few weeks though. Even writing this update feels a bit awkward when I haven’t logged in for almost a month now (I was afraid at how dusty my dashboard would be)
To my fellow ani-bloggers, do these “dry spells” ever happen to you too? How do you cope with it?
So yeah, just letting you guys know what’s up. Still have some academic stuff to cleave through but I’ll be back soon. ‘Till then ^_^
Yeah, there are definitely “dry spells” for me. For dealing with them…just don’t give up. Don’t fear your dashboard, and remember your blog (but don’t feel chained to it!). When you have something to say and the motivation to say, then please do. Otherwise? Don’t worry about it. Just don’t shut yourself out of your blog.
So basically, don’t worry about taking breaks, so long as you retain some interest in the activity of blogging itself. At least, that’s what I do. As long as I don’t kill my blog myself, it’s always got a little bit of life left in it.
I guess I was stuck on the idea of scheduled posting which made it harder for me to pick the blog back up when a certain amount of time had passed. Scheduling worked for me earlier this year so I thought it was the way I should go about blogging. As you mentioned, I may have chained myself to it.
I think that as long as I feel the same way about anime, the interest will still be there, so no worries. The burn outs, and getting out of it, I think are what hit me the hardest.
Thanks for the advice 😀
After school started, I’ve been on-and-off for a while now. It’s something I foresaw, so I didn’t really think much about it.
I don’t know if i’ve said this to you before, but try remembering the first motivations that got started on blogging. If you can regain that bit of joy every time you click that publish button, then you might find it easier to do what you do.
There’s a “strategy” called “doodle then write”. Simply jot down bits and pieces of stuff you got in your head whenever you watch/thought about the topic and sometimes viola! You might have 50% of a post already.
I was hoping I could juggle blogging and school work like I did last semester, but I guess majors are a different story
I have a feeling that you did say that before, lol, but yeah, I’m sure that ani-blogging is still fun for me, it’s just the matter of how cluttered my thoughts are on something I want to write about.
Doodle then Write eh? I should give that a shot. Thanks du5k 😀
I usually carry around a little notebook or my tablet and jot down my thoughts on whatever I seen or care to write about. This helps alleviate some of the “awkwardness” I also feel from being away from my site, but also keeps me on track when I do post or less attempted to make revisions while writing.
Since blogging is a “finding the right time” thing for me, doing small things like keeping a notebook keeps me both motivated and helpful for capturing good ideas. In addition, it also helps me from feeling pressured to write something. Although, doing nothing and just relaxing while finishing school work also works for me. In other-words: doing small and simple things can take the pressure off of feeling pressured. Probably not the advice you want, but my own silly method works for me.
Actually, before I started this blog, I used to maintain a sort-of nightly entry (kinda like blog posts) of anything interesting that happened that day (anime included) on a notepad app, but by the time I started blogging I stopped doing that.
I set up my blogging as being a weekend thing, but sometimes the weekend isn’t really the “right time” so I guess it’s more of a priority issue on my part. Similar to the advice du5k gave above, I could try just jotting down things whenever I feel like it (being sporadic kinda works in my favor I suppose).”doing small and simple things can take the pressure off of feeling pressured.” – true, and it applies to a lot of other things too.
Nah, I’m not looking for any particular sure-fire advice, and yours applies to me greatly. Thanks, and yeah, maybe I have a silly method of my own that I’ve yet to notice 😀
Ah cool, that’s similar to what I do, but in my case, I try to avoid using a notebook since it’s a pain to retype them. Whenever I’m out, I bring my netbook and my Galaxy Note with me. So whenever I have some inspirational thoughts, I quickly pop up my netbook’s wordpad and type them. If the area I’m in now has wi-fi access, then I quickly post them in my WP draft, if not, I will use my phone’s portable tethering.
In my case I do that when I suddenly get the urge to add to or write a new story. Just a random past-time of mine. Most of the time I’d pull out my cellphone and just write bits and pieces of scenario and save it in my message drafts. Strange that I never thought of doing that for writing up blog posts drafts, lol
I’m travelling very often this year and not very invested in anime as I did last year. Having said that, I do find it quite hard to write posts these days hence the sporadic update on my part. If I’m lucky and found a lot of things to write then I’ll try to schedule the posts so at least there’ll be updates every other week.
Yeah, I think the longer we stay away from the scene, the harder it is getting back in. More so when it meshes with other things- like travelling in your case, hoshiko. Maybe it’s a timing thing, like saying blogging has its peak times as well as its low times for a person.
Take it easy, write about what you like and try to set yourself objectives. That’s all I can say in order to keep interest in the blogging hobby.
Hope you’ll be back in full force soon! 🙂
Yeah, I still certainly like anime enough to write about it. Might try writing about different media just to see how I’d fare with being diverse.
Should be soon enough. 😀
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