I’m often asked what I’ve gained from daily blogging and I often find it hard to quantify exactly how it has improved my life.
Yesterday though, I was asked a question that was harder for me to answer. “What negative effects has daily blogging had on your life”
I believe there is almost nothing in this world that is only a positive with no harmful side effects. Some things may even be great for you but becoming obsessed with them is what drags it to become an unhealthy thing.
When I was asked how it’s negatively impacted me, I struggled to come up with an answer. The only answer I could come up with was that it had a certain amount of sacrifice related to daily time. Every day for a year I’ve spent probably an average of an hour a day on my blog posts. In the past couple of months, the time has been decreasing exponentially to the point where an average post may take 20 minutes max. But when I was first beginning I was investing much time into it – multiple hours a day often.
The average from the year probably rounds out to about an hour a day.
If I’m honest, the time-commitment really wasn’t a big deal. Sure, there were times that I really just wished I could go to bed and about killed myself trying to stay conscious enough to write, but even in those times, it wasn’t a huge sacrifice. It was just an extra thing.
Besides the sheer time commitment that it took each day, what harmful effects has it had?
In many ways, it has simply become a way of life. It’s not something that I think about anymore. When I get back from a long hard day, whether that be at 5pm or in this case, 2:30am, my mind knows that the time I have left awake is for blogging my thoughts down.
If I were to have to make up things that it has been harmful on, perhaps it would be something along the lines of I have become so comfortable writing my thoughts down in words and publishing them that I have less of a need to talk to others and confide in them my many emotions and thoughts.
My extroversion has somehow been able to come by writing so that I have less of a need for human interaction. It’s not that I enjoy it less, but I need it less. Some may see that as a good thing, but others as a bad thing. I’ll let you be the judge.
At the end of the day, my mind wanders back to the fact that I wouldn’t be having this thought today if a year ago I hadn’t started writing every day and publishing it. And for these thoughts and the many wonderings I have, I directly attribute to the act of writing daily.
Try it for 30 days and see what happens. I’ve never met someone who has regretted it.
Until my way of life switches, I anticipate that this will continue to be part of it.