Quick Tip: Stay Regular by michelle w. on February 21, 2013 – Posted In The WordPress Daily Post
This is the sort of ‘prompt’ that makes me really want to spit the dummy and pull the plug on WordPress, I am, as was once famously exclaimed in a meeting in one of my former workplaces, incandescent with rage. I’m also chomping at the bit, and what is THAT going to do to my metaphorical ‘gastro-intestinal health’ Michelle???!
This was posted on a friends status recently and I’d love to be able to add WordPress slap bang in the middle of it like the soul sucking vortex it is turning into for me, but of course we already know I’m lacking in the technical geek genes to do that and it would probably be a guaranteed “Not To Be Freshly Pressed Ever” flag on my account, and no one really wants that however bitter and twisted they are feeling.
Ideas For Getting A Life 1.) Take A Fleet Of Four Wheel Drives On The Ferry To North Stradbroke Island To Play Beach Cricket With Friends – Impossible To Do If You Spend Your Life Blogging As You Will Have No Real Friends To Go With
I think most bloggers out there are already intelligent enough to realise that regular content garners regular followers, and though there is a lot of very sensible and useful advice in yesterdays Daily Post I’ve been left with an overriding feeling of anger and resentment towards the author. There are many bloggers who are already dedicated, conscientious and on task with regular output; they treat their blogs like an extension of their working life’s or as an inroad into the working life they have not yet attained and are dreaming of. And when I say working life, I’m meaning actual factual, paid and contractual, working life’s. The most prolific ones notably already have very successful careers and a proven track record of meeting writing deadlines in their About pages. But the reality is that the blogging community is as diverse as the ‘real’ world outside of the carefully crafted and themed screens, and surely that’s how it should be, not just an army of robots all dancing to the same Daily Prompted and pre programmed tune?
Ideas For Getting A Life 2.) Dance Yourself Dizzy With Your Best Girl – The Family Who Get Pissed Together Stay Together
Some of us are dictated to more by the state of our mental health than an oppressive overseer (though you could argue that the two have a lot in common) and our blogs reflect that, tough, deal with it WordPress. If you have mood disorders your writing will follow a haphazard and erratic pattern, particularly if you don’t want to be a blogger who is posting from the very depths of a big black hole week in week out, depressing some poor happy soul who chanced upon that post, and especially if this is a creative hobby that you only get a pittance for from WordAds. Some bloggers do want to share their darkest hours with the world and that’s fair enough, they are brave enough to write about all their problems, including ironically, their problems with writing….metablogging??! But the inherent danger of that is that there is also some serious burn out happening to WordPess Bloggers the world over, a plethora of too many personal details going global and eternally accessible for my liking, and frankly, some tedious and boring naval gazing going on as well. I don’t even write a daily entry in my journal because sometimes I have nothing worth expressing there either, which is unfortunate because my favourite quote from Oscar Wilde is:
“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
See, even he was a slouch in the reading and writing department at times, all of the getting the life that he got was understandably exhausting. What would his pithily witty response to the Daily Post be I wonder?
Ideas For Getting A Life 3.) Go To A Coldplay Concert…Hell Yes And Congrats On The Brit Awards Guys!!
Personally, I think interesting content comes from people who are out there getting a life, meeting friends, travelling, doing the day to day stuff that occasionally turns up a gem of a post in response to the actual experience, and not merely the imagination. I am growing increasingly envious of photography blogging and I may cut down my verbiage posts and insert more quick and snappy image and tag line ones, but that doesn’t mean that I’m suggesting that you all convene every Friday at 5pm Australian Eastern Daylight Saving Time precisely for a ‘regular’ posting of heavily edited, exquisitely shot and framed photo montages. Plus I don’t even have Photoshop yet so I can’t compete.
Ideas For Getting A Life 4.) Go On A Pony Trek Through The Hinterlands And Ask Your Husband Repeatedly At Regular Intervals….”Does My Bum Look Big On This”???!
So bloody what if people don’t post for ages and then come back with a “I was busy” post? Hurrah for that, because I’m rejoicing the fact that you were busy doing something else and I can’t wait to hear about it whenever you’re ready to share, but if you don’t that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop reading your blog full stop. It’s unhealthy for everyone to just sit at their computers feeling pressurised into posting regularly instead of getting out of the house and away from social media once in a while TO GET A LIFE WORTH WRITING ABOUT INSTEAD. Every now and again we just don’t ‘want to go’, and for some, Michelle must be the healthy dose of fibre packed bran they desperately need in their writing diet to get them ‘going again’, but for me it’s just a dose too much of intervention and virtual workplace bullying.
Ideas For Getting A Life 5.) Take A Cable Car Ride In Cairns With A Beautiful Friend Who Is So Scared Of Heights Even Her Palms Sweat And It’s Down Right Dastardly And Hilarious To Keep Standing Up And Scaring The Shit Out Of Her Even More – Now THAT Will Keep Your Bowels Moving, You’re Welcome! 
And what about the reader in all of this? Are there any considerations about the audience response to the churning out of Daily Posts by the same bloggers? What about the pressures we are under to consume all of this prolific daily output. I don’t know about you (but please feel free to add your two penneth worth in the comments) but I don’t have time to actually dedicatedly follow every single post from my fellow bloggers either. Don’t get me wrong, I love my blog and all the other blogs that I read, but it’s going to remain on my terms not yours Michelle.
Digest that if you can, and don’t expect an apology if it gets stuck in your craw colon.
(She may or may not also breath fire with her incessant demands but if you have actual proof I suggest you dedicate a FaceBook page to documenting the evidence, you will get at least one ‘like’ from me).
I’m kind of on the fence about this one. I went to read the DP post you were referring to and though I think it’s a good general guideline for bloggers just starting out, I think we all find what works best for us on our own, which doesn’t always adhere to the “suggestions” or “tips” that others give. I think once you build up an audience, people care less about you posting regularly than about you posting something they care about or is at least of good quality. Quality always trumps quantity so I agree with you that people should continue going about having a life so they can write about more interesting things. Lots of food for thought here!
It’s a conundrum isn’t it?! most of the time I ignore the prompts, occasionally one gives me a good idea, but this one really got under my skin a bit for some reason and just annoyed me…it’s deeply ironic of course that it actually ‘prompted’ a post out of me!! I’m just feeling particularly waspish today.
Well-said, though I completely disagree. Or rather, I read Michelle’s post entirely differently. I mean, she starts right off saying that even once a month is “regular” enough. I think the point she was making is that disappearing acts and continuous posts about how you were too busy to blog don’t exactly make readers want to read. If you are blogging just for yourself, and not your readers, as a sort of homage to the life you live, then I understand your point. My husband is that type of blogger– he’s a writer, and his blog is really just for him to get out the thoughts that have no other place to go. But most bloggers, blog to be read, and the follies of the readers are yours to bear– that’s part of the writing gig. I know if I visit a blog that posted daily for a week, and there’s nothing, I’ll only check back a few more times before I decide that blog “got disappeared”. It happens a lot. I’d either unsubscribe or lose interest.
Plus, I’m not sure how much reading of the Daily Prompt answers you do, but I’m guessing not much because your post indicated that it was all the same. Sometimes, it works out like that– like today, most people would un-invent money and dangerous things. But most of the time, each prompt allows the writer a venue to to write about the things they write about. A food blogger always writes about food, regardless of the prompt. A humor blogger makes any prompt funny. Sometimes it’s just the push they need to tell a story about the life they live.
I’m also not a huge fan of the image you paint of bloggers who are able to manage a regular schedule. I, for example, work 50 hours a week, have pony trekked, and mountain climbed, and cook dinner, and manage a freelance web career– and still find time to blog, many times thanks to the prompts offered by the challenges of the blogging world. Many online friends have become real life friends, and many of my real life friends will attest to the fact that they are neither neglected nor imaginary.
On a completely unrelated note– you may want to look into downloading a free photo editing program if you’re only looking to put in text or frame a photo. Picasa works great for that sort of thing! 
erm, thanks?! I’m not entirely sure how to respond to this but thankyou for taking the time to comment, and in the interests of a balanced view on the topic you do make some valid points. I’d have to take issue with the comment that I don’t read many of the prompts, I do, and have responded to some of them in more conventional ways, I just feel like sometimes there is too much pressure for everyone to conform to being ‘regular’, I applaud you for still being able to blog when you have a busy life, I just can’t always match that level of commitment myself. I’ll check out the photo package as I’m a bit lost as to where to start with some decent photography posts, does it have a function for watermarking so that I can actually put my name in the image/try to prevent blatant infringement of blogging copyright etc?!
A regular poster is not necessarily a conforming poster, just one who doesn’t get left out with all the noise of the internet. I do understand the point you were making, I just thought it was a little harsh on Michelle since it didn’t seem to address anything she actually said, and a little harsh on participants of the daily prompts who very often write unique content, as well as a little harsh on regular posters who are not necessarily friendless homebodies… so I felt the need to speak up.
But it was well-written, and the essence of the idea– the thought that a life well lived makes for a blog worth reading… well I agree wholeheartedly with that. 
And yes, Picasa can help you add a watermark.
I don’t know if they call it that, but all you do is add text or an image and make it transparent to around the realm of 10% opacity, or put a small line of text on the bottom. There’s also some filters, though I’d suggest using those in moderation. It’s nice to use them to give your photos a distinct look– a certain tone of brightness or saturation– but keep in mind that authentic photos are better received usually. 
My last daily prompt response (two posts ago) was two weeks late, but I did have a good ‘I’ve been busy’ reason/we had no power and then no internet connection excuse. I’ve got a decent SLR Canon EOS50d that I get some great photos on and just recently I’ve been fiddling around with my phone and Instagram. I’ll bear it mind about not editing too much and keep it a bit more real. Thanks again for the comments, I do value everyone’s contribution and it’s at least got people talking on my blog today, hopefully Michelle is robust enough to flick off anything negative I’ve posted, and I did make some effort to respond to her ‘colon’ theme at least.
I just had to come and read this when you wrote in the DP comments that you had written a post slagging it off
I find some of their banal pre-kindergarten level advice often gets a post out of me too, and I may yet write one about that. Although not an incandescent with rage one, more of a ‘yet more patronising drivel from WordPress’ style post.
I love your humour in the captions on the photos, no 2 has to be my fave, closely followed by no 4. My partner wants to know how long the cable car has been in Cairns as he doesn’t remember it.
Enjoyed this post, it’s a good read.
hurrah! thank you so much for stopping by with this comment, I was beginning to worry I’d been too harsh and was going to be taken too seriously over this post! as for the cable car, are you married to Methuselah?!! kidding! I thought that it had been there since about the 1970′s but I’ve just checked the website and it was opened in 1995…..just looks old and decrepit already, that’s Australian tourist attractions for you!! at one of the stop off’s there is a little museum that houses the original wooden one that went up part of the way……it is mega, mega high up through the canopy you get on near Palm Cove and it takes you up to the mountain village at Kuranda and then you can get the old train back down. I might do a post about it with some photos, it was beautiful. Even I was crapping myself though, there was four of us in there and we are all pulling the same ridiculous grins in the photos……they are similar to some later ones when we were very, very, drunk, who knew fear could give you the same expression?! here’s the link to the cable cars enjoy the virtual experience!!! http://www.skyrail.com.au/about
Yup, spot on. I met Methuselah in Sydney and we married in 1985. Methuselah went to Cairns in the early 80s. He said the only way to get up to the tablelands at the time was to drive. Anyway we’ve got a cable car in Gib five minutes away if I want sweaty palms and a serious attack of vertigo.
The rickety train coming back down the mountain was fairly hair raising as well but it was beautiful up there. I had my first snorkelling experience on this trip as well, at Michelmas Cay…..in a storm. I saw a lot of sand churned up and a giant clam, or it might have been a turtle, or just a big rock. It was not like the brochure promised.
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I came across from ‘roughseasinthe med’ via the WP Daily Post prompt….is it just my imagination or is there a tone of sycophancy in the many replies, thanking Michelle for her post?
I enjoy blogs that say what they say, when they want to say it….and I’ve had my horizons widened considerably since starting to blog, just be reading people who are passionate about what they do….and who don’t need prompts.
I think that’s what had really got under my skin a little bit yesterday, there is a distinct lack of realism sometimes on WordPress. Sure, there are some brutally honest posts but there are also too many comments that just appear to be massaging egos as well. I’m not suggesting that everyone turn into trolls and be as ‘harsh’ as I am, just that there are some more open and healthy debates. Many thanks for the comment and stopping by, I appreciate it.
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Really, your blog *should* always be on your own terms, no? We’re certainly not trying to tell anyone how often they must post or what they have to write about, but we do want to provide resources (which people can take or leave — we’re robust enough to be okay with that:) ), as well as a space for bloggers to talk about their own perspectives and challenges — in a lot of ways, those conversations are more important and useful than the posts themselves. We just provide the tinder for the discussion.
We do have a lot of Daily Post readers who are just starting out, but I recognize that not everyone’s on the same level or has the same needs. I’d be really interested in hearing about what posts have been helpful to you, and what other kinds of things you’d like to see on Daily Post.
Michelle, firstly thank you for commenting because I didn’t for one minute think that the WordPress team is not robust enough to deal with the odd criticism or negative response and I think that’s valuable for other bloggers to realise as well. The point I’m trying to make in this post is that actually I have personally felt that over the last few months there has been a relentless push to imply that everyone should be churning out more posts and more regularly or they are going to have a blog that will wither and die. If everyone takes the time to go back just two posts to my last response to a daily prompt “Please Sir Can I Explain” (see link below) they might have a better inkling of why I’m so cranky and hypersensitive right now. Today in Queensland we are going to celebrate Australia Day 2 as our annual public holiday for Australia Day on 26 January saw most of the East Coast for thousands of km’s declared a disaster zone; we were without power for days and then internet access for nearly two weeks. I spent that time getting really stressed about losing readers on my blog, not commenting on other blogs, and having to come back with an ‘apology for being absent’. That is ridiculous considering everything else that was going on here. When I did get back on line there was a whole heap of daily posts and freshly pressed to catch up on not to mention engaging with my own little circle of fellow bloggers who have supported me from the start. So the pressure of remote daily social media demands has got to me and I just think that’s worth sharing with other bloggers who might feel the same way. It’s a raw nerve right now that’s all and has unfortunately left me feeling like that there is a lack of empathy out there for bloggers who genuinely are not lacking in ideas or appreciative of the prompts and advice you’re giving us, but have to pay some attention to what is literally going on in their own back yards right now. I may just unsubscribe for a while from the Daily Post and hop back in when I’m feeling more robust myself and able to keep it all in a better perspective and not feeling quite so overwhelmed by WordPress. I just think it would be a lot healthier if more people were honest about their blogging experiences as much as their life experiences instead of saying what they think other bloggers and in particular, WordPress administrators seem to want to hear, and as respectfully as possible debate how they receive some of this information stream. I would really, really like to see a post that acknowledges that WordPress should never become an additional life stressor for anyone, that people shouldn’t worry too much about the pressure of retaining readerships by posting even when their mental health is really too fragile to be doing so, and just for the sake of it, and perhaps some links to blogs who are dealing specifically with coping with those sorts of issues. For now, here’s my “I’ve been busy” post. Best Wishes, from me Dawn (not Anna, Not Prawn, but actually in the real world called Dawn), and you can poo poo the dragon reference with any colon related defence you want as that was probably a step too far even for me
http://wordswithnannaprawn.com/2013/02/09/the-daily-prompt-two-weeks-late-please-sir-can-i-explain/
Dawn,
I’m glad you and Michelle had a chat about this matter because, quite frankly, I didn’t think your post was written to offend. I believe it was written to inject humor into an ongoing subject bloggers think about and struggle with. As a blogger, I’ve covered the spectrum of blogging daily to blogging weekly to blogging erratically and I can attest that it’s all bloody hard work. When I was blogging daily, conditions were conducive to that approach; now they are NOT and I’m not losing a wink over it. Follow the beat of your own drum, do what works for you, and leave the rest. I’m glad I found you via Zemanta.
Cheers,
Elizabeth
Thanks Elizabeth, I think most people following me for a while know my style and it’s a cliché but I am from Yorkshire and we’re pretty much renowned for being blunt, in your face, not mincing our words and with an often dark sense of humour. It’s not always received well universally and some people even face to face just don’t get me at all. But my God it’s going to be a boring community if everyone just bleats the same style and message repetitively?! I also think the majority of bloggers do realise that this is not a commercial enterprise for many of us and are a little bit more realistic about their expectations of how often people can or want to post and it would be a healthier environment if people were cut a bit more slack over it. Many of the people I follow go quiet for weeks on end, I don’t view their blogs as some magazine subscription (for free!) that I demand timely, on schedule posts from, these are real people with real lives and there are thousands of other posts to read in-between ‘regular’ postings from my favourite bloggers, I don’t even need an explanation, I’m cool with the fact they were doing other stuff. I honestly didn’t set out to just be controversial or contentious, I surely can’t be the only person who feels a wee bit pressurised from time to time on here by the barrage of info? A go to section for newbies starting out would be great, a little bit more support and understanding for those of us who are never going to post regularly but still want to keep a blog ticking over would be even better. It’s not the ideas I lack, it’s not always just writers block or needing a new fancy theme, I just need some private down time a bit more than other daily posters and don’t want to be made to feel guilty or inadequate because of it! best wishes and thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment.
I think we have to remember the blogging world is full of people with different literacy levels. There are also children who are blogging.
There does tend to be tendency by WordPress.com happiness staff, to emphasize more on blogging several times per week, not daily. Sometimes I can’t help but laugh: really it’s for …people who have a large chunk of free, focused time, perhaps several hours, to blog.
How long does it take for any of you folks to write your post? For me, it takes me several hours and that includes finding and adjusting my photos. If I did this several times a week, it would wear me down. I wouldn’t have a life outside of my full-time job!
Great post nanna.
ditto! I take ages proof reading and usually still amend and edit after I’ve posted, you have way too much cycling to do to be posting daily!! Thanks for the comment.
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