Blogging slumps. We all have them. They always suck and they’re always difficult to pull out of. But what happens when you finally DO get back to normal and everything else doesn’t?
As some of you may remember, last year was one long, awful slump for me. A lot of changes and big events happened in my life and I went through a bit of a rough bout of depression that left me struggling to read and struggling to find the motivation to blog and blog hop. As much as I love all of these things, I found myself lacking the drive to actually do them, even though not doing them made me miserable.
My awful blogging slump lasted nearly a full year, but then I was back! I feel good! I love reading again! I love blogging and blog hopping and interacting! What I found, though, was that while many of my good blogging friends stuck by me and were still here when I got back, the community as a whole had continued on without me. I had to find my way back in. From one year to the next my visitor stats dropped by almost half and in the months that I’ve felt back to normal I have struggled to bring them back up to pre-slump numbers.
This is the aftermath of a huge blogging slump (and of course, by blogging slump I mean depression that leads to an inability to blog).
I’ve been back, like I said, for a few months, although I still don’t feel like I’m all the way here. Some days it’s still not as easy as it used to be to get online and comment back. Sometimes it’s discouraging to see that the level of interaction I had a year and a half ago is so different, although I love every single comment I get! Sometimes it feels like my blog will never be completely back to where it was.
So how do you recover? Of course, I’m only one person, but here is my answer:
You recover from a book blogging slump by learning to love it all over again for what it is: a hobby that you love and wouldn’t know how to live without. Of course, the visits and the followers and the comments are all fantastic! But at the end of the day, that’s never what book blogging has been about for me. It has been about reading books that I love (or don’t) and sharing them with the community. It’s about interacting with other book lovers because that’s a type of (vital) interaction I don’t get in real life.
What I’m trying to say is that, while the aftermath of a blogging slump isn’t pretty, it is possible to enjoy it. It’s so easy to get overwhelmed by stats, since that’s what publishers focus on. But if you’re currently in the position I was in last year, don’t give up hope! It’s okay to take the break you need, love yourself, and when you get back your blog and the community will still be here. There will be time to rebuild your stats and you’ll still have the books while you do!
Have you ever found yourself in a blogging slump that wasn’t just a small hurdle? How did you deal with the changes when you finally got back? I’d love to discuss it!
