My name is Jane and I'm a blogoholic

I’m serious, lovely PB friends, all 147 of you (and hello to all the new faces – welcome to life on this crazy planet!). Dead set. This post has been brewing for a while and now I’m ordering an ‘intervention’ for myself. So what’s going on? Well, I think (er, know) I’m finding this bloggy caper a tad (make that very) addictive. It’s having a real and detrimental effect on my life and I need to take some action. So, are any of you nodding away there, thinking “Oh, yes, Jane, I hear you”? Maybe some of you are scratching your heads in disbelief, wondering “What is she talking about?”. Well, my bloggy friends, let me explain myself. A self-diagnosis, if you will. Or a public service announcement – take your pick!

Definition

So, back to basics to start. Is ‘blogoholic’ even a word (you all know how much I love words)? Well, Mr Wikipedia says so (‘a person addicted to blogging’. Hmm, original.). Hey, there’s even a quiz to determine whether I’m one. The result?

I do quibble, however, with the reference to StumbleUpon (I tried living in that universe and soon fled back to Planet Baby, chastened. It’s so unrewarding, infinite and soulless. And no, I didn’t insert the hyperlink for it!). I’ll settle for ‘82% addicted to blogging’. Woops!

Symptoms

I have so many, it’s hard to know where to start. This post mentions 100 symptoms of a blogoholic (I scored 46. That makes me feel a teensy bit better!). Here are a few of mine:

Habits

• Obsessive monitoring of my statistics. I didn’t choose just one statistics site, like other bloggers. No, too many stats are never enough for a blogoholic. I signed up with SiteMeter, Lijit and StatCounter. Here's the kind of information I've been poring over.

For the longest time, I even had all three widgets on my sidebar. I have no idea why. Maybe I was trying to compare which one was the best so I could dump the others. But then I found they all had different, yet excellent, features. So I was torn between them. And kept them all, flitting between them, trying to meld the information into something useful. A fruitless task. I’ve now settled for one. And it really doesn't matter which one I chose.

• Leaving the computer on all day. Before blogging, I would check my e-mails and Facebook a few times a day. Each time, I would turn the computer off. Now turning it on the first thing I do when I get out of bed and turning it off is the last thing I do before going to sleep.

Physical

• I am exhausted. Before blogging, I used to go to bed at about 10.30 pm. Now it’s mostly midnight, at the earliest (maybe you’ve noticed the strange times of my posts and wondered if they were for real. All real.). I wake up in a haze of sleep deprivation and stagger through my day on PB.

• I sit at the computer for most of the day. I don’t spend much direct time with the pixies anymore. I initiate activities for them which will maximise the time I have to blog. Oh, and maybe incidentally, minimise my efforts to engage with them properly. Sigh. Here I am, caught in the act.

  

• I have hardly had any proper contact with my family and friends lately. This is particularly disturbing. I am so tired, I can’t even remember who I need to contact, let alone write a list or even follow it. I have cards and presents waiting to be sent (or even purchased) to babies who were born weeks, if not months, ago. I forgot to go to my friend’s dad’s funeral (she was very gracious about it). A close friend has a sick father and I can’t remember to ring her. My girlfriend just remarried and is pregnant and I haven’t a. bought her an engagement present, b. bought her a wedding present or c. even rung her. And I feel terribly guilty. But as soon as I remember, I forget again.

• I haven’t read my magazine subscriptions for months. Before blogging, I treasured reading my favourite magazines such as Notebook, Country Style and Home Beautiful. Now I have a huge pile which is about three months’ old, lying there, unread. Unopened even. Hmm. What is going on?

• I hardly read my Sydney Morning Herald anymore. I adore this newspaper and used to devour every word. Now I barely have time to scan it each day.

• I haven’t done any cross-stitch for months. Before blogging, I adored my cross-stitch. I have almost finished Sam’s Beatrix Potter birth sampler but I haven’t touched it for months. This is where I'm up to.

Mental

• My sleep deprivation has exacerbated my PND. Before blogging, we’d finally made a breakthrough with my medication after over a year of trying all sorts of combinations. I was starting to feel a little more human again. Now for weeks, I’ve been on a downhill slide (I’m going to do some separate posts on my PND sometime soon).

• I have bloggy brain. Do you know the sensation of walking around constantly composing posts in your head? Or thinking as things are occurring whether they are ‘post-worthy’ and if so, which angle you should take in the post? Or taking photos purely for your blog? Or staging photos to take for your blog? Hmm, guilty as charged.

• My brain is addled. As in mentally confused or muddled. These analogies fit:

1. My brain feels like mud.

2. I can’t remember to even write a to-do list, let alone use it (so unlike Ms Virgo me). Even this is beyond me at the moment.

3. I feel like I’m swimming through treacle.

4. My brain is like alphabet, no make that word, soup. This image sums it up best.



Take a peek inside my head

How did I contract this condition?

Don’t get me wrong. I adore this bloggy caper. I wouldn’t change things for quids. I’m so delighted to have found you all. To have connected. To have been transported to faraway lands. To have shared in life’s challenges with you. To have discovered brands, shops, websites and groups I never knew existed. To have formed friendships. To have helped connect people with similar interests. To have had private e-mail conversations with a multitude of people spread all over the world.

It’s just that I’ve overdone it. The tireder I get, the more obsessed I’ve become. I’ve forgotten that the main reasons I blog are for my personal satisfaction in recording moments on PB for posterity (particularly given my PND) and rediscovering ‘Jane the person’. I’ve become caught up in worrying about unimportant things. I fret over the tiniest details. My posts take hours to draft (that comes with the territory with 3 under 5, I suppose, but I really do preview my draft posts too much). Okay, maybe I don’t have many typos or errors, but at what cost? I don’t want blogging to feel like a chore or an unpleasant task. I want it to be joyful, satisfying and liberating.

Treatment

Right. So, where to from here (she asks somewhat nervously)? Here’s my plan.

• Reduce the number of blogs to which I subscribe. Last night, I was horrified to see in Google Reader that I was following 532 blogs! Yes, no typo. 532. After concentrating on the task for 30 minutes, I’d reduced my list to 222 - see? I’ll cull some more tomorrow.

• Unsubscribe from the dozens of search engines, blog networks, shops and other companies who send me their e-mails and newsletters. My life functioned quite well before I knew all these things existed. I simply don’t have the time or energy to waste on reading them, let alone thinking about them or acting on them.

• Instead of posting most days, I think I’ll change to every 1-2 days. I need to actually have a life outside Blogland!

• Stop purchasing e-books and downloading PDFs about blogging. I have 16 waiting to be read. I am not joking. I’m sure they will be useful. It’s just that I’m not in the right space to use them at the moment. I need to step back and think about what blogging really means to me.

• Respond to comments on my posts once a day, probably at night. I know I’m a bit unusual in that I respond to every comment left. But that’s important to me. You’ve taken the time and effort to connect with me and I want to return the courtesy. But as the readership of PB grows, that might become a bit too much. I’ll just wait and see. But for now, I’m going to try to only do it once a day, not pouncing on comments as soon as they arrive.

So there you have it, my lovelies. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Does any of this sound familiar? Are you conflicted like me? Have you been down this road, too? Do you have any advice for me? I’d love you to share – surely I can’t be the only one (she asks rhetorically, in a high-pitched voice)?! Oh, and should I join Blogoholics Anonymous?