Blogging: Hobby Turned Addiction?

Interesting story. I guess you can never know before hand what's treatment is going to work. Light therapy, psycho analysis, CBT etc. I wish all depression could be cured with some sun & sleep!

Stu of Drug Rehab at the Canyon ( http://www.thecyn.com/ )

not until you don't dream about blogging.... then you are an addict.
suboxone detox ( http://www.meditoxofpalmbeach.com/ )

...or bloggers scoring book deals.

Blog addiction and blog ennui: if your blog becomes successful, you have to maintain it, then it becomes more a chore than a hobby. Or conversely, your blog isn't growing, people aren't commenting (been there), and it feels like a big time-sucker with no reward. Why am I doing this if no one reads it?

I'm not sure blogging has improved my writing skills, other than I can make my point with fewer words and get it out there more quickly. When I started not even a year ago it took me about forty-five minutes to compose a post that today takes me, maybe, ten or fifteen. Ha. Maybe I've just become a faster typist. What did Truman Capote say? That's not writing, that's typing.

Five Dollar Camera ( http://www.fivedollarcamera.com/blog/ )

In my travels through cyberspace, I have noticed blog after blog discussing “Internet addiction” and “blog addiction.” Today, however, I read about a blog-related issue known as “blog depression.” Quite honestly, I thought that the feeling of “pressure” and “anxiety” I had been experiencing about keeping up with my three blogs was unique to me.

After thinking about things for a while, however, it has become apparent to me that many bloggers “out there” must be experiencing some of the same negative feelings about their blogs that eventually stopped me from keeping up with my posts.

What can a person do who experiences “blog depression”? Among other things, take a break and “go outside.” If you think that this is a rather simplistic suggestion, please continue reading.

I remember reading about a person who complained to his therapist about being depressed and “stuck in a rut” for many years. After listening to her patient ramble on for weeks about his drab and unexciting existence, it came time for the therapist to take a stand and advise her patient what to do. On the day of reckoning, the therapist calmly smiled at her patient and said: “you need to get some sleep and get out in the sun once in a while.” Upon hearing this, the patient understandably felt “cheated” with such a “simple solution.”

The point: sometimes we make things so complex that we become caught in a cycle of “paralysis by analysis.” In a different scenario, maybe the patient described above, after years of psychoanalysis, finally “understood” why he had been depressed and “stuck in a rut. And maybe based on this “insight” he started to live his life more honestly, more fully, and with more joy. On the other hand, this same patient might have viewed his world in an entirely different way with a good night’s sleep and by spending some quality time outside in the sun.

If you have to, take a break from your blog, “go outside,” and enjoy life.

I think we have to somehow learn how to balance our online lives with our lives outside of cyberspace. Sadly, many people engrossed with the Internet haven’t learned this and have, as a result, become so enamored with their online activities that their lives, especially their relationships, have become dysfunctional.

DenMan7
http://www.About-Getting-Sober.com

I suspect a lot of people are lured in deeper than they had ever imagined by the prospect of making money. Once they hear about people like Andrew Sullivan making $160,000 a year blogging, or sites like RocketBoom pulling in $85,000 a week from advertisers or YouTube being bought up by Google for $1.6 billion - they figure maybe *somehow* they can do it too.

-Bob
bobafifi.com ( http://www.bobafifi.com )

usedflutes.com ( http://www.usedflutes.com )

fluteplayer.net ( http://www.fluteplayer.net )

Your post entitled “Blogging: Hobby Turned Addiction?” is right on target. In my travels through cyberspace, I have noticed blog after blog discuss “blog addiction” and “Internet addiction.” Quite seriously, blogging and surfing on the Internet may be replacing the TV as the "activity of choice" for many couch potatoes—-and with similar results: lack of exercise, laziness, and/or little or no desire to “get out there” and enjoy life.

It sounds like you are in tune with yourself and at one point realized that blogging was not helping you but rather hurting you.

I think we have to somehow learn how to balance our online lives with our lives outside of cyberspace. Sadly, many people engrossed with the Internet haven’t learned this and have, as a result, become so enamored with their online activities that their lives, especially their relationships, have become dysfunctional.

Thank you for some quality thoughts and a dose of reality :-)

DenMan7
http://www.Alcohol-Recovery-Info.com

I somewhat agree, I'm too busy blogging. However, were it not blogging, it'd be something else. I can't sit still, I must be accomplishing something.

Years ago, before blogging when I was involved heavily in a non-profit organization, we were told to look for volunteers not among those who had free time, but among those who were already busy. People who are busy will keep themselves busy. People who are not busy will not busy themselves working for you. ;)

At least with blogging I have an archive of my busyness and productivity. And, blogging gives me an outlet, a 'self importance' that I need as I sit at home writing amongst a bevy of little ones, often feeling like one of them and not an adult. As a business blogger I get to be an adult with real opinions and real ideas that matter to other adults.

I'm not downplaying my mommy role, but I appreciate the respite and conversation of my busy 'other life' on the blogosphere.

Robyn Tippins

( http://feeds.feedburner.com/sleepyblogger/Rjxs )

Very good comments, people. I'm just contemplating spending more time on a writers' forum rather than blogging - perhaps I'll get off faster! I dunno.
I think the content here at BlogHer is well-collated and rich enough to keep me reading blogs for a long, long time, even if I'm not writing posts as often as I used to.
Like Sarah, I'd like to get past the 15 minute barrier - too much of my writing at present is snatched. However I do think blogging is a great sharpener and I've enjoyed finding links for posts, and having to play at being my own editor and journo rolled into one. It's fine when I feel I'm getting somewhere - it's those patches in between when I spend too much time playing with links and del.icio.us and new toys that are the trap I think.

Genevieve blogs at
you cried for night
( http://austlit.typepad.com/cfn ) and
the weblog repository ( http://austlit.edublogs.org )

I agree with you on all those points Susanne. Well said. My husband feels the same way yours does though. I find myself contemplating quitting about once every 6 months, but mostly due to pressures outside the blogosphere. You know, like housework.

The limits thing is a good idea.

You had me laughing with your last line. I don't really feel that we are all like that. I'm sure there are bloggers out there that have that image of themselves, but the bloggers I read tend to be very down to earth, bare-all-feelings type of people, and it's refreshing to read them and relate to how they feel too.

--
Troll Baby ( http://www.troll-baby.com/ )

Troll Baby Graphics ( http://trollbabygraphics.blogspot.com/ )

Of course. I think most of the bloggers do have a real life. (What else would they be blogging about?

But I have been thinking about blogging as some other form of procrastination too. Right now I should be working on my business homepage, a song and a concert, and what am I doing? Commenting on blogher. My husband thinks, blogging and reading blogs takes my energy away. And he's right.

But he's also wrong, because without blogging I'd never write two or three essays a week. I wouldn't write at all. And I love "meeting" people from all over the world.

And I know that I always find ways to procrastinate. First it was books, then it was tv, now it's the web.

But blogs have given me a feeling of connection and of "At least I'm not the only one feeling this way!". And that's very rare in real life.

So I'll do the same thing I did with tv. Limit. Only read or post when the "real work" is done. And if somebody doesn't like a blog or a blogger it's really easy to avoid it, him or her.

I'd better go over to my blog and post something egotistical and fat headed.

Read me at Diapers and Music ( http://www.susannefritzsche.blogspot.com ) or in German Windeln und Musik ( http://www.windeln-und-musik.blogspot.com )