If you’ve been following me closely, you’ll have noticed that things haven’t been going as normal.
I’ve been blogging pretty inconsistently.
I’m not nearly as active on social media platforms as I’ve been in the past.
You aren’t finding my smiling face on other people’s blogs or on marketing forums.
The places where you could expect to see me practically any time you visited, I’m now not showing up at all.
Why?
The truth is, life can be pretty interesting. Events happen that you don’t expect. Things happen that you have no control over whatsoever. And suddenly, that forces you to refocus your priorities.
For better or for worse, this has been what’s happening to me in recent months.
Due to an interesting series of events, I have sort of ‘taken in’ an 8-year-old girl. As any parent would know, children take up a lot of time. In my case, this was time I would previously had spent growing my business.
Fortunately I am in the process of reorganizing my schedule to try and minimize the impact of this new loss of time, but I have to admit it is quite difficult. I now truly realize how much of an advantage I had when starting my business all those years ago, as I had no real responsibilities. My time was completely my own, free to do with it as I please. I didn’t have a ‘job’ to work, mouths to feed, or places I need to be.
It’s different now, and I’ve got to be honest with you – I don’t know if I could have ever built my business up to the point it’s at now if I would have had all of those responsibilities. I pride myself on working hard, but like all of us, I am only human.
So What Does This Have To Do With You?
I felt as if I needed to explain myself, but really I don’t.
At one point or another, life will throw a curveball at you and you’ll probably end up having to put your business in the back-seat for a little while.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
Consistency is important. Publishing the same day every week, week-in and week-out will help you grow and retain an audience.
That’s all fine and dandy, but if you spend all your time thinking about the things you should do, if you feel like you need to follow some set of pre-defined rules to succeed, than you’re going about blogging all wrong.
The purpose of building a business is to become your own boss and free yourself. By feeling like you have to follow the rules every time you do something, you’re doing the opposite of what you originally set out to do.
You do not owe your audience a new blog post every X amount of days. It’s true that doing certain things will help your audience connect with you and lead to more money, but you do not need to feel guilty for taking some time off and dealing with life’s surprises.
Conclusion
Do what you need to do. Your blog will be here when you get back.
And your truly loyal audience members will be here too, ready to consume whatever you put out when you return.
I’d love to hear about a time you took a break from blogging for a while, and how you managed to recover and get things going again when you returned. How did it work out for you?
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