I think I’ll start this blog post out with a recurring and relentless theme that has managed to infiltrate my habitat at the beginning of spring every year for the past two or so years.
Now, I’m good with nature doing what nature does. And any insect can totally have free reign in its natural habit. I won’t interfere with that. But once you come into my habitat (known as my home territory) and try to take it over, you’ve got a fight on your hands. Anyway, let me calm down a bit. I’m still quite emotional from last month’s attack, but the side effects of war are lessening day by day.
Seriously though, I have to say that once I got on the other side of the literal onslaught of the ants in my house that somehow manage to crawl under the wooden floorboards of the office and start to literally mark their territory (from my territory) in an organized array of attacking formation, I was able to view this remarkable creation for what it’s been inherently charged to do — WORK! (Well, that was a run-on sentence if I’ve ever seen one.) But honestly, I can’t be mad at the work the ants put in. Worker ants are programmed to GET THINGS DONE with a fierce determination.
And if I flip the script and turn the focus on blogging (since we are into a “Blogging Truths Be Told” post), then I have to spin the conversation around to “blogging” of course.
So, why do people (from the outside looking in) think that blogging involves little work? That no worker ant ethic is required? Could it be that those who know better purposely give other human beings this false perception of reality? Look, I’m not as disappointed in the uninformed folks who form a distorted perception of blogging when looking from the outside and really having no experience or true reference point to draw from.
My issue is more so with those seasoned bloggers who make blogging appear so easy to the novice just coming in. Just because YOU are currently riding the wave of blogging success, sir and ma’am; please don’t make those coming in look at you and think they can jump right in to the kind of success you have (that took you years to achieve) at the onset of their blogging journeys. You end up feeding the misguided bloggers who enter the blogosphere with a fantastical sense of reality — bloggers who naively expect the world of blogging to lay out the red carpet while they leisurely walk the path of success effortlessly.
Again, who’s out there painting a false picture of The Blog Life and the grind that’s involved in getting your content off the ground? I hope it’s not you, dear reader.
And if it is . . . STOP IT! It’s just plain wrong for you to mislead people like that.
Blogging is HARD WORK, if you’re truly trying to do it justice. But if you don’t really give a care about the content you put out and aren’t trying to make a living out of doing it, then you very well could be totally comfortable with creating subpar content that reaches very few people. And in that case, I guess you’re just blogging to yourself, practically. And who am I to judge someone who’s not looking for his or her blogging to make an impact on anyone else’s life but his or her own? More power to you if that’s what floats your boat.
BUT . . .
To those of you who want to positively impact others (and as many “others” as possible) with what you do, you’d better get prepared for a reality check of astronomical proportions.
The liars, telling you that blogging is easy, probably haven’t done an iota of blogging in their entire lives. And if they have blogged, then they’re purposely leading you astray for their own gain (in some diabolical way). Stay clear of those jokers; they’re no joke. And, they’ll have your mindset off in some unforsaken destination that’s leading you anywhere else but to success.
The overarching theme of this whole blog post is that blogging is work and it takes consistent effort at it to see positive results. And why is blogging work? Well, because it doesn’t just involve writing content for writing’s sake. There’s a whole long line of hats you wear as a blogger. And to make any kind of notable progress in garnering an audience, you have to reach beyond the writing itself.
And I’ll say this much. Anyone coming into the blogging ranks who doesn’t make sure that he or she is well versed in what it truly takes to have the slightest semblance of success in blogging has done him- or herself a great disservice right off the bat. Why wouldn’t you take the time to research out what you’re getting yourself into before you actually get into it?
With all the information out there these days, we really don’t have an excuse for our ignorance when it comes to taking on new endeavors (to us) that have been in existence (for all mankind to partake of) for some time. However, the fact that we have a plethora of information out here that we have easy access to can also be a problematic situation if you get your hands on the disingenuous stuff and consider it to be your guiding force into the blogging foray.
Do your research and understand that you will do some work as a blogger. If your research leads you to the “blogging is easy” fallacy, then you know you got your hands on the wrong information. Go ahead and discard that mess asap.
Should I actually list out some of the working ways you’ll stumble across when blogging for success? Well, I’m going to regardless of your answer to this question because that’s what people who care about you will do. They’ll tell you the truth whether you want to hear it or not.
So, let’s just rip off the bandaid, shall we?
Or, on second thought, I think I’ll reserve the lesson from the University of the Painful Truth for next Friday and list out some of the ways in which you’re going to work (and work hard) as a blogger — just in case you’ve been listening to the wrong voices up till this point and have an adversely skewed understanding of what you’ve gotten yourself into.
Look at it this way. It’s better to self-correct now than to spend any more time wasting your time if you’re not ready to be the relentless worker ant you need to be to survive the blogosphere.
So, I’ll be back next week with your weekly dose of blogging reality. Tune in then for more blogging truth. I just can’t help myself.
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