The #BlogLife: When Your Life Directions Alter Your Blog Themes
I started this health blog more than six years ago. Over the years, it’s transformed from a general health and wellness blog focused on nutrition and fitness tips, to a more personal documentation of health, to a lifestyle blog. I never intended to share anything personal on the blog (and I still remember the first time I ever posted a photo of myself on the blog!). But it grew in this direction, and I went with it. That’s one of the things I love about blogging: it’s such an organic, ever-changing entity.
When I first began blogging, I religiously posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday before 9am. As I added a rhetoric blog, a food diary blog, and a fashion blog to the Living in the Real World brand, I posted less frequently here – sometimes only once or twice in a month. I’m now making the effort to publish articles once a week on each of my blogs, but it’s much more about posting articles when I have something to say and when it’s something of real value, rather than just writing an article for the sake of doing so.
The biggest change I’ve found with my blogging experience is how much my Living Rhetorically in the Real World blog has become my “main” blog. For the longest time, all of my other blogs were accessories to this health blog, but now my rhetoric blog is taking the lead. And it has changed drastically over the five years that I’ve been blogging for it, too: what started out as a platform to discuss rhetorical theory, analyze advertisements, and explore language has turned into a practical blog on how to manage a business, reflections on freelancing, best practices for social media, and more.
Living Rhetorically in the Real World started surpassing Living Healthy ever since I became a full-time freelancer, at the time when my life started shifting away from food-focused (although I obviously still love my health & wellness & nutrition & fitness!) to small business-focused.
This is one of the beautiful things about blogging, in that it is a reflection of the direction your life takes. We blog what we know about, what we’re passionate about, and what we want to share with the world. And although I don’t generally blog for *me* and instead like to think that the articles I write have value for at least one reader out there, it’s nice to see how my blogs have evolved over the years, and to explore what that means for me on an individual scale. Sometimes you don’t even realize how much your thought processes and priorities have changed over time until you start looking at how much your writing and blog topics have changed!
I love this, and appreciate you and all incarnations of your blogs. It’s been fun to watch you grow and change along the way.
Mine started as a fitness blog so long ago. Even though the term fitness is in the title, rarely do I write about fitness anymore — at least in the main stream sense.
Like you, have let flow of an increasingly complex and an ever changing social media current carry me to where I stand today — wherever that is 🙂
There’s so much opportunity that comes with blogging! And I like that along with the themes, we can challenge definitions of things, such as your “fitness” – it’s amazing how many different ways “fitness” can be portrayed and how many connotations can come along with it.
Oh yes. Now I blog only when I have something worthy & insightful to say. Forget about “for the sake of it”. That’s what drove me to want to quit blogging several times. Blogging has surely been a journey of self discovery and an exercise in knowing what you want (if that makes any sense).
Exactly! I remember going through a phase where I felt so guilty if I didn’t post anything, and I wound up posting articles that weren’t quite *right* just for the sake of it. Which is ridiculous. Much better to occasionally post less frequently and have higher-quality, useful blog posts.
This is a great piece.
I just shared it on my Facebook timeline.
I usually look at blogging from 2 perspectives:
You can do it for the traffic to sell something or you can do it to provide value to people’s lives.
So if you are looking to just get traffic to your blog you have to write at least say 4 articles a week, super.. But the content is prob going to watered down and not going to provide much as we have busy lives and tight schedules.
But if you provide at least one article that was properly researched, provides insight and educate, you will start building something great that people will appreciate more plus the traffic will come automatically.
It’s all about the quality and yes as you grow as a person, so will your topics and themes as well. You are giving your opinion on something based on where you are currently is as a human being.
Keep up the good work.