It’s the 19th of March, which means that it’s exactly 4 months since I launched. Time flies and I can’t believe how fast this month has gone! I’ve been so sloppy this month (cry) and I’ve been really hard on myself because of it. I’ve just been so busy and writing just takes up so much of my life as it is. However, despite this, I’ve still had a readership and thank you so much for that! I promise I will be back soon all guns blazing! The blogging journey is certainly up and down every month but it definitely keeps it interesting.

My Blogging Journey:

So, what did I learn in month 4 in my blogging journey?

1) Sometimes a Second Blog Is Needed

I realised the more I worked on my blog, that I shouldn’t be trying to fit everything all on one website. I have a massive book of ideas and I have enough ideas to fill two blogs anyway. Also, I found that my festival blogs were doing the best and it attracts an entirely different audience to my expat/travel posts. For this reason, I decided to create a new website called Waiting On Tomorrow (yet to launch properly on social media).

This took a long time to set up and I’m proud of it. Creating a new website and moving all of my festival articles over gave me so much more scope to talk about things on this blog. It meant that I was not bogged down with festival articles that most of my audience was not interested in. I saw a massive hike in readership of these festival articles once I moved it all over to a specialised blog, so I definitely made the right decision.

2) Having Two Blogs Is Hard Work

It may seem reckless to launch another blog when you’re struggling with the one you’ve got, but timing is key and I needed to launch Waiting On Tomorrow if I wanted to rank at the most relevant point. Right now I’m not promoting it on social media until the summer, so a few SEO articles are just sitting there and doing their job, but then I remembered I still need to write and post new articles. If you’re already struggling to find time with one blog, how on earth are you going to manage two? I realise this now, but once I’ve sorted my schedule out, I know that I will finally be able to manage them both properly – but it won’t be easy.

If you really need two blogs then go for it, if not, then don’t.

3) If You Write for a Job, You’re Probably Not Going to Want to Write

I have struggled SO much this month, barely posting at all. I write articles ALL day for a job (and I write about Dutch/expat life too), so finishing work and then straight away going off and writing articles all evening has become my idea of hell recently. The weekends I’m either busy or I really just want to chill. Writing every day of the week would honestly kill every brain cell that I have left.

If you spend your whole working life writing, you probably feel the same. To me, writing is fun – it’s not a chore, it’s relaxing. But writing 24/7 is far from relaxing. Take this into consideration if you want to start a blog, but you’re writing anyway – it’s damn hard. I feel like I need to go away and reset, even from work. I’ve done manual jobs and I’ve never felt anywhere near as worn out as I did writing all day. I think it’s just mentally tiring having to articulate your words ALL the time.

4) Being a Perfectionist Can Backfire

My perfectionism has definitely been detrimental to the workings of my blog and social media and I’ve heard of many others feeling the same. A certain level of perfectionism is okay, but if it’s overboard, it can literally just backfire. For instance, I’ve had articles sat in my drafts for ages now and I’ve barely posted, all because I can’t bring myself to post them without them being 100% okay. The same goes for social media – especially Instagram. I just delete and repost and delete and repost, because I want the grid to look perfect. Then I can’t bring myself to post because it takes me so damn long to edit and find the perfect spot to upload it. The blogging journey is definitely harder when you’re trying to make everything perfect (which is impossible to do anyway).

Honestly, it kills me. I’m like this with everything in life though and I think that I just need to chill the hell out. I’m sure I notice things that other people probably wouldn’t even look at.

5) It Really Shows When You Don’t Put the Effort in

In case you haven’t got the theme throughout this post yet, I really haven’t put the work in this month as much as I should have. Month on month my viewing numbers have got higher and higher and this month it took a huge dip. I wasn’t posting new content. I wasn’t promoting new or old content and I wasn’t being strict with myself. This is really enlightening though, as your hard work really shows.

Of course, some of you have been finding me through search engines and others have been looking on my social media or just being nosy. So thanks, it’s nice to know that lots of you still come no matter what. 😉 It’s really great for driving you forward in the future though, as a lot of effort really shows and how great is that?

I just realised this blog sounds so negative and depressing and that definitely wasn’t intentional – just bitterly honest. I’ll be back next month for month #5 and this time I promise I’ll be back to posting as usual! Did you like this article? Check out what I found in my first, second and third month.

Have you found similar issues in your blogging journey? Drop them in the comments!