Blogland Syndrome

I'm in a unique position right now, designing blogs for people, in that I'm exposed to an awful lot of blogs.  Not just those I design.  You might say that scouring blogs has become an obsession.  It's how I get my creative juices flowing.  And I just love looking at pretty blogs.  So I do a lot of blog hopping.

Lately, this thing has been heavy on my heart.  I've seen it come up time and time again.  In blog after blog.  Even in emails that clients have written to me.  Today, I got one such email that said something along the lines of, "I hope having a pretty design will help me get traffic to my blog.  I'm stuck, I don't know how to get more traffic."  And it made my heart sad.

Sad because I've fallen victim to the same self-deprecation, so I understand.  It hurts.

Blogs are awesome and wonderful and obviously, since it is now my business, I'm not saying that blogs are inherently evil.  If blogs ceased to exist tomorrow, that would suck for me and Bella Lulu Ink.  So I'm not launching a war against them.  But I am saying let's stop the madness.  These tools like Bloglovin' and once upon a time some other service whose name has escaped me (that had something to do with posting some button on your blog and other people would come post and you would earn coins or some other stupid crap like that), these things exist because we're all seeking out blog success.  We all want to be the next Dooce.

Because...life would be better if we were famous?  If we had 500,000 visitors a month?  I mean, what are we seeking, really?  A few minutes ago, in my blog hopping, I ran across a post that a girl made that she later regretted.  She said something along the lines of, "I can't do this.  I'm done." and then the next day, "Just kidding, here I am, ready to try again."  In reading her posts at length, I learned that what she was done with and then ready to try again was making her blog successful.  Why does she only have 300 followers?  What's wrong with her?  She talked a lot about depression sinking in and self-deprecation hitting hard.  Because she only has 300 followers.

I think back to my mom's generation, and I wonder...was it nice to have less pressure?  Blogs and Pinterest and Facebook are all really great and valuable tools, but like I've talked about ad nauseum here, sometimes I can't help but think at what cost?  My husband left social media all together many months ago, and he nudges me on occasion to do it myself.  He's so much more present and so much less distracted.

This self-imposed rat race to have the next big blog is sort of ridiculous.  That it drives people to depression when they have 300 followers is sort of ridiculous.  That we've fostered this environment where the measure of success is how many people subscribe to your blog is sort of ridiculous.

Once upon a time, you grew up, endured high school and knew that once you made it out on the other side, the cliques would mostly dry up and life would be a little less...miserable.  These days, the high school cliques live on in Blogland.  Another post I read recently was all about the cliques at a blog conference.  The girl set off to the conference elated and giddy to meet some of these "famous" bloggers and left feeling deflated and unworthy.  It's why I have no intention of ever setting foot in one of these blogging conferences.  Thanks but no thanks.  Call me a party pooper but I know I have thin skin.   High school was hard enough.

And in a lame attempt to drum up blog followers, we've now resorted to button swapping, wherein we pimp out our blog and plaster blog buttons all over our own blogs, typically those we don't even read or care about.  Last month, I ran across yet another post that drove this point home.  The blogger said after much thought and deliberation, she was no longer offering paid ads or button swapping, but instead she would be posting the buttons of a handful of bloggers who she really read and cared about, and she wouldn't ask for money to do it or require that they post her own button (bravo, by the way!!!).  And that got my wheels turning, because it only hit me at that point that so many bloggers are selling out, posting buttons of blogs or companies they may not even care about - or worse, dislike - to make a buck or pimp their own blogs out.

I mean, it's sort of weird, isn't it?  This new environment is a breeding ground for self-loathing and insincerity.  Do we really even care about half the blogs we read and comment on, or do we do it so that we can get traffic to our own blogs?

I'm not perfect.  I can say with 100% honesty that I couldn't care less how many people read my blog, though.  All twelve of you are amazing, don't get me wrong, and I appreciate it.  But I write for me.  I write because I'm a terrible mom who hasn't filled out baby books and I hope that I can at least jot a few memories down to preserve.  I write because I'm a passionate person who is way too timid to share my opinions with people in person, so this ends up being the only way I get brave enough to get things off my chest.  I write because I'm a deluded person who believes I can change the world if I have enough passion and caffeine.  I'll totally rid the world of GMOs and the perception that soy is good for you and fat is bad and that liberal Christians are evil.  :)

There was a brief period of time in which I attempted to have a popular blog.  I fooled myself into believing that I could or that it mattered.  That my life would be better if people liked me.  Because isn't that what it all boils down to, really?  It's just the grown up version of high school, and we're all trying to be one of the cool kids.

Just...write for you.  Don't pay attention to your traffic or feel unworthy because nobody comments on your blog.  I can't help but wonder what the precipice will be here.  Maybe there never will be one, and this sort of drama will continue through the generations, but I sure hope not.  I don't want my daughter to feel like her worthiness is measured by her blog followers and that being a good mom means everyone loves you, you have a crazy instagram following and your blog is blowing up all over Pinterest.

And today, because I recognize my own weaknesses, my own thin skin, I'm going to unfollow every popular blogger I follow whose blog I don't actually care about at all.  Because the truth is that it's almost every one.  I was attracted to these blogs because everyone I know talks about them.  It was sheer curiosity with a dash of, "Could I be like her?" thrown in for good measure.  Do we follow these people on instagram and twitter and read their blogs because we care about what they have to say or because we have deluded ourselves into thinking we're one of the cool kids if we do?  If they reply to a comment, does it somehow fulfill some lost and empty part inside of you, created by the rejection you experienced by some group somewhere during the course of your life?  For me, it does.  And that's stupid and lame and in the end it just backfires.  And newsflash: it always will backfire.  I get on instagram these days and end up feeling like crap about myself.  I see all these "big" bloggers spreading the love back and forth between the handful of them, and I feel like I'm in tenth grade all over again, failing to measure up.

Enough is enough.  I want to teach my daughter to love herself, not loathe herself.  And what kind of example would I set if I continued down this path of wanting to fit in versus hating myself because I don't?  I may not talk about it out loud, but surely she can sense those feelings.  I know I am grumpier, my demeanor has to be different after a spell on instagram or google reader.

Some people have thicker skin, and this is so not even an issue for you.  If you're one of those people, you're awesome.  I wish my skin was thicker!  I wish I cared less what others thought of me and had more self-assurance, but I know myself.  I may have lied to myself for a few years, but now I'm getting real, and I'm recognizing what ends up making me feel lousy, and I'm taking steps to get that crap out of my life.  Because I want to be the best friend, mom, wife, daughter, granddaughter, etc., that I can be.  If I'm spending a whole bunch of time reading blogs I don't care about, following people on instagram I don't even know and beating myself up for not being cool enough, I'm wasting a lot of valuable time that I could be using to do other things that are actually beneficial to myself and those in my life.  Like, I don't know, reading the Bible.  Talking to God.  Praising my hubby.  Calling my friends.  Gals, let's stop the madness.

Phew, over and OUT.