#LoveBlog Reflections

#LoveBlog and the month of February is coming to a close today. For the last prompt, I'm taking the time to reflect back on the experience.

The #LoveBlog Experience

I did not discover #LoveBlog until two or three days into the month thus I had no plans for participating and no time to prepare posts in advance. In fact, I just kind of jumped in… I think I participated the first Thursday of the month, started a blog post for Friday that never got finished, and then we were into the weekend… I asked my husband "What should I do? Do I continue on with #LoveBlog? Do I stick to my current themes?" Inevitably, with me being sick, #LoveBlog won out.

Just because I decided to do #LoveBlog while I was sick does not mean that I anticipated #LoveBlog posts to be easier than any other blogging I've done. In fact, I expected quite the opposite. Yes, there would be days when I would throw a post together an hour before work, but there would also be days when I would spend hours (or even the whole weekend!) contemplating what exactly to say or how to respond to a topic.

Then, even beyond the simple prompt answers, I would need to step out of my comfort zone and be more open with my life experiences sharing how certain events made me feel. In other words, I was hoping to connect with you all. My experience + your experience = our experience. 

Emotions

Was I successful?

No.

And yes.

The first few days I was apprehensive about what to post. That's why I missed the first Friday post. I spent 3 hours (or more) writing and editing a blog post about the most meaningful gift I had ever received. I assumed I'd be able to pull it together before work that day. I clarified content, scratched out unnecessary fillers, and edited up my post until there were only minutes before I had to leave. As I went to press publish, I hesitated. Was I comfortable with this post going live? Should I edit it later in the day and post that night? As it turns out, showcasing your true emotions (or even defining a life event as pivotal) can be overwhelming and stressful. I decided to take the weekend and decide if participating in #LoveBlog was right for me.

When you blog, you run into problems like: "Is this post too journal-y?", "How much information do I really want to share with the internet?", and, for me, "What will my in real life friends think of my post?" There have been times when I wonder if I should simply change my blog and go even more anonymous (if possible) just to get away from the preconceptions that these people place on me. It's not like I want to lie in my blog posts, but it's more a question of how much do I want people to know about me? (Especially people I see and talk to regularly.) And what if I have a feeling towards something that they find offensive or hurtful? … I wonder if having real life friends reading my blog hinders my writing and limits the emotions I feel comfortable expressing on here… Should it?

My other focus, even beyond connection, was discovering ways to work emotion into real topics. Or re-defining the topics so that they worked for my blog. You know how your writing teacher (or any other teacher) would give you a topic to write about for a research paper and you would groan and be so bored writing on it? Well, your paper showed your boredom, I'm sure. One of the best lessons I ever learned was how to change a topic to fit my personal interest. My goal, anytime I have a prompt, is to make the topic personal to me. Was I successful with #LoveBlog in doing that? Meh. I've done better in the past. The key, I think, is not reading other's interpretations before writing your own. If you haven't decided how to respond to a topic, while other blogs may provide inspiration, you won't necessarily go into responding as clear-headed and focused as you ought. In fact, you may end up stealing someone else's interpretation. 

(source)

If I do #LoveBlog next year, what would I do different?

Well, for one, on day one, I updated my blog design. Accidentally, that is. I was sick and I wasn't actually planning on changing the look that day. Whatever. I did. And with that came a lot of HTML changes to make the look work … at best, temporarily. I'm still working with the design.

Then, with the updated design, came a fail in analytics. For 19 days this month, I have no idea how many visitors stopped by my site. I was hoping to learn how participating in a link-up affected my blog views. And now I have no idea. If I continue to write about topics you all aren't interested in, I blame my analytics failure.

What I'm saying: I won't change the blog design. Analytics will be more accurate. Hopefully I'll have updated pictures… (It's a goal, anyway.) And I'm hoping to have better, more focused content.

In Conclusion

#LoveBlog was a nice break from the ordinary. I enjoyed not reviewing for a time and also the challenge of responding to topics outside of my comfort zone. I would definitely consider taking part next year. :)