5 Things I’ve Struggled with as a Blogger

Blogging is cathartic for me. A searing to the exposed and painful wounds of this world. The images this renders also relate to the second reality of blogging in my life. It’s anxiety producing. Even as I type this I feel the tensions within me welling to the surface. You can’t cauterize a wound with the mud and grime still in it. It will never heal. The treatment becomes more necessary as the condition is more dire. This is also more terrifying.

In my year of blogging I have learned a lot about myself, yet feel in many ways that I am back at square one. Perhaps it is that nothing has physically changed for me, only my perspective, but sometimes that’s all that is necessary.

I am more afraid than ever of the things I began writing to free myself from. I am coming free of them, and at the same time my mind graples to hold them still. And so, I still write.

At the risk of being repetative, my struggles are my own. Predominantly from within me.

That said, I am done with thinking that I am the only one that feels these struggles.

Here is a list of my top five barriers to writing effectively.

Felling a Lack of Voice.

In Ecclesiasties King Solomon laments the fact that there is nothing new under the sun. Everything has been done before, said before, seen before, and will be again.

I always think of this fact when I have an idea come to me. I think, “Why do I think I have anything to say when everything has already been said.” This will often stop me short while writing to ask myself if this really is something worth trying to put out there. That can be a healthy check, but don’t forget to push past that fear sometimes!

When I find my voice, fearing to share it.

So, on the off chance I make it past the first one I write the post or begin formulating the idea only to realize that there is a slice of something controversial in it that someone will say something about and I don’t really feel like “dealing with” that. That is the second killer of most of my posts.

The “I’m Weird” factor.

I have always felt weird as a person.

I feel that I think differently than others. It doesn’t help this idea that people tell me this on a regular basis. This makes it hard for me to feel confident in posting something that I don’t think others will relate to. I screen my writing for popularity standards, trendiness, social norms, and relate-ability. I find myself using simpler language than I would want to because it would aline me better with the level of education I believe I have. As I pause and take myself out of my writing I am actually slowly killing it.

I sense an intellectual caste system.

I don’t have the credentials that I need to be writing what I am writing. This is one I feel must be false, but have yet to see any evidence of in my life. I was born where I am, well under the priviledge line of an academic, and will die where I am. Unable to dig myself from this uneducated pit into the light of the masters degree. I think only time will tell on this one, but finances have been the steady rock wall between me and my goals.

All this leads, almost inevitably, to this fifth issue.

I end up with more posts unpublished than published.

And the ones I do end up publishing are so much less than I want them to be because of all the fear I have bottled up in those other reasons.

Perhaps this is one of those depression posts that I didn’t realize was that until I get through writing it. I didn’t intend this to be as low as it is ending up sounding. Perhaps this is “all in my head” as the Lavin Poe song in the background is saying.

And yet, maybe not.

Let me know if you deal with this too.

If this post can help you to avoid my pitfalls I will know I have done my job!