Life is just not smooth sailing

Life is not just smooth sailing.

The road of life can twist and turn and get a little bumpy at times.

Life is not easy – there are often hurdles in the way and mazes to negotiate.

Sometimes life jumps off the tracks and you head in the wrong direction.

And then at times life just sucks.

Have you got the point I am trying to make? The journey of life can throw up some interesting and challenging obstacles from time to time. These challenges can distract us seriously from our prime activity, whether that is writing or blogging or a combination. How to deal with it and still keep the momentum of your blog is the challenge.

Emergency posts

A very valuable strategy for bloggers is to write emergency posts. These are articles you have written but not yet published. They are not time sensitive articles so that they can be published at any time. If you have three or four of this type of post written, you can use them when the family dog takes ill, or Grandma dies, or you need a short rest or whatever the emergency is in your life. If you have such posts ready to publish you can relax and deal with that curve ball and later come back to blogging afresh when the trauma is over.

Writing ahead:

A variation on the emergency posts is to write articles ahead of when they will be published. I set the timestamp to the date and time I want the post to be published – set and forget (except I do keep a chart listing the dates they are to appear). I do this all the time but note that all three of my blogs are not time sensitive. When I know I will be away from the computer for a length of time – such as on holiday or travelling – I can relax knowing I have articles all lined up ready to appear on my blogs each day for the duration. This strategy is particularly useful when writing a series of articles on the same theme. When I get into the groove writing a series I can churn out five to ten articles in a day, sometimes more.

Holidays

With Christmas and New Year just around the corner, using the methods outlined above can help you to really relax over the holiday period. You can take a break from blogging every day and give yourself a few days to recharge the batteries. You can then come back to writing and blogging with new enthusiasm in the New Year.

Further reading:

• Emergency posting of blog articles – for those times when life gets too hectic