Beginner’s Guide: You have to know Why You stopped blogging

This Blog post is about why I stopped blogging for 6 months.

AI

Everywhere you look, you see AI. I’m gonna be completely honest: it took me a long time to understand that this was part of why I quit posting. AI is an amazing tool that can be used, but I do believe that it can be abused.

Everywhere I looked, everybody was using AI. There was no original content, and that was so frustrating to see. As someone who’s trying to keep up. I’ve been trying to use AI alongside my own work. Now I feel ashamed for not using my own brain and my own knowledge. Granted, I only used AI for things like Grammarly, spelling, or fixing a sentence. But I still felt like I was cheating in some type of way.

AI, as I said, can be an amazing tool if it’s used right.

I don’t feel like I truly understand how people can put out content that is obviously and blatantly not their own and take full credit for it. I’m just now coming around to the idea that it is OK to use AI because it’s in everything we do now. Even when you’re trying not to use AI, you’re going to use AI.

What you can’t forget is the meaning of creating content, which is to be original. It’s the touch of people, and that’s just something that AI really can’t replicate. That is why whenever you’re looking at something, and you bump into AI, it doesn’t feel authentic. I have pushed so hard for all of my content to be authentic. That is something that I refuse to let go of.

So here I am now, finding the balance between AI and using my own education, my own knowledge, and my own personal experiences. Because, whether we like it or not, I know that AI is here to stay. There is not much I can do about it. What I can control is how I decide to use it in my content.

That doesn’t make me a bad person or make me less authentic.

Boredum

Your girl got really bored with doing the same thing over and over and over. If you haven’t started a blog, you really don’t know how tedious it is to write a blog, research, connect, put matching pictures, make sure the emails are going out, and schedule everything. And then let’s not forget the external side of the blog. You gotta make sure you’re connecting your Facebook to your Pinterest, and all of that. It gets boring sometimes.

When I just named over 100 things that you have to do within a week, it gets boring. I’m doing the same thing over and over and over. No matter how many coffee shops I went to, I just couldn’t find the love to continue.

I think I forgot exactly why I decided to go on this journey. All I was doing was going with the flow. I was just saying, “Oh, this person is doing that, then let me do it.” I really couldn’t find the love, and that is why I feel like I fell into boredom.

Imposter Syndrome

If you have ever followed me for a while, you know I’ve talked about the past, how it only took me six months to monetize my blog. It took me three months to get an Amazon affiliate influencer program account. And on top of that, it didn’t take me very long to start making money off of my blog.

And with that full-on speed ahead, I did start to lose interest. I started to feel like, what else can I hit if all of the goals I wanted were achieved within the first six months? What more can I do?

I am back because I know there is so much more I can hit. There was so much more I hadn’t reached for yet. There are brands I would love to connect with, people I would love to connect with. In fact, I was able to get that within six months. Can you imagine if I put another six months of hard work in, like I did the first time, how much further I would be?

Rather than being on my Pinterest, my Facebook account, my Instagram account, my blog, etc., you name it, if I put six months in with my head down, I bet I could reach so much more than I can think of right now, and that is my goal.

Boredom is the act of not having enough to do, and baby, I have so much.

Perfection

I have a hard time not being perfect. Follow me, I know not everybody is perfect, but I strive to be that. I’m also my biggest hater, so I am a lot harder on myself when it comes to imperfections or when I look at my blog and compare it to other people. And that’s not fair to myself because I’m on my own linear progress. I am on nobody else’s timeline, but my own, and it took me a while to understand that.

Perfection is the killer of all joy. Joy is sloppy, if you really think about it. When somebody’s frolicking through flowers, when somebody is jumping up and down, it is rarely ever contained. The most fun is when you’re just flapping your arms around, smiling, giggling, laughing, just full of joy.

And I was squeezing the joy out of my blog by trying so hard to keep up with everybody else and where they were at, where they were going, and how much further along they were, that I wasn’t recognizing the hay. I’m perfect in my own little way. I have so much more growth, and I have so many more things to show. And by not allowing myself to see my own way, I’ve paid for it. I blocked the beautiful view that I created.

Overwhelmed

Hey, I’m the only person running a blog with all of my content. All of that is coming from one brain, and I got overwhelmed. I have no management. I felt like I could. And guess what? I got overwhelmed and overcooked.

There were too many hands in too many pots, and I just quit. I burned out, and there was not much I could do or bring myself back into it. Because Mama was done in the kitchen.

Now that I’ve taken this hiatus of not posting anything and slowly building back up into my love for why I started this, I know to start slow. Momentum is all about the beginning paces, and although a sprint is a burst of energy, this is for the long run. I am not going for a 100-meter dash; I want to do the full marathon.

Growth comes from starting slow so that you can ground those roots into the dirt and build a beautiful foundation so that I will be able to flourish. And that is the most important part: sustaining a long-distance goal.

Forgetting why I started in the first place

I also forgot why I started in the first place, why I went into blogging, and why I needed to initially. This blog was meant to be a place for moms to go to find an outlet, to know they’re not alone, to find information, resources, and things they can actually read and connect with. A place that reminds them how important they are in their own lives, other people’s lives, and especially their children’s lives. I forgot why I started this blog because I forgot how important I am in my own life.

My blog was meant to be a place where I could escape to. Where I could feel like I was important, where I could give out information that I knew mattered, and where the degrees I earned would be put to use in words. And I fell off of that. I fell into the cycle of how much money I could make, how much content I could push out before I drove myself into the ground, because that’s what everybody else was doing.

As I mentioned before, everything has shifted so quickly into AI that most people don’t have to use their own brains anymore. So I was trying to keep up with them, not realizing I was keeping up with a robot. And robots can think within a second, and here I am, it takes me 20 to 30 minutes to type out a rough draft of a paper, and I just felt inadequate. I felt stupid. I felt stuck in an environment where I started questioning: Is there even going to be a need for bloggers anymore? Is blogging just going to be AI?

The answer to that is no.

Because just like real content is used on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, people want real human interaction. Sometimes being with or interacting with AI can stimulate something we can’t get from ourselves, but humans want human contact. Humans want to know that the content they’re getting is high value and not mass-produced.

That is why I started my blog, because I was a mom at home with three children and a husband who was working his butt off, and I needed an outlet. I was doing everything so my kids had the life they deserved, so my husband could go out and do what he needed to do, so he could bring home the money, so we could experience life. But I forgot how important it is for me to also have that outlet. I was too busy trying to keep up with things that weren’t connected to the original goal.

Wrapping it up

No, I’m not saying I’m gonna be throwing out three blogs a week. I’m not back to that crazy, cycle-heavy version of myself yet, but I am going to do better. We’re going to work on releasing at least five blog posts a month, and that’s what I can promise myself, my audience, and my future in this world.

I’m going to get back into something that I love, and I’m not going to make the same mistakes I made yesterday.

Thank you for reading.

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