Overcoming the Blogging Slump: My 1 Year of Unexpected (Social Media) Silence

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So, it’s been a while…

Since I believe in looking at the bright side first & foremost, let’s just say that 2024 has been more educational than I thought! It was also more productive than I anticipated, just not in the direction I initially planned…

The nitty-gritty

But, on the flip side (since I also believe in being upfront), my year has been productive only in ways that don’t show. At least on social media. Which as we all know, is what matters, right?

This has been the longest blogging slump I’ve had since I re-dedicated myself to my blog.

One of the last things I had posted on Instagram, before a burst of content around October, was a #MatchaMonday photo of Starbucks’ Matcha-Lavender drink. From summer-onwards, I would look at my own inactive feed and think, “Wow, if I didn’t know any better, I would’ve assumed trying the Matcha-Lavender drink straight up killed me.”

At least I can put that to rest (pun intended), and say that I’m still drinking matcha, dreaming of traveling, and dining on both Costco hotdogs and exquisite desserts when I can. There will also be more blog posts to (hopefully!) look forward to.

In fact, in even better news…

I am physically as strong as I’ve ever been, stronger even.

See, at the end of 2023, the topic of the whole “New Year, new me,” mentality came up with my husband and our friends. We agreed that it’s not a sustainable habit for most, and my stance is that it’s self-sabotaging at worst, and irrational at best. After all, why wait weeks, or even months to start healthier habits? My thought was that if you already know what you want to accomplish, why lose that momentum?

…Granted, in an ironic twist, I didn’t get a chance to sit down and breathe until the first week or so of January. But as soon as I could, I started mapping out the personal, professional, and health goals I wanted to accomplish throughout the year. I gave myself rough timelines for each and determined to check in on a quarterly basis.

There were a few different goals I wanted to get to, but ultimately, they all boiled down to investing in myself in 2024:

• I wanted to work out, more or less consistently through the year. Even if it was around 1-2 times a week. Before, I would go strong and hard for about 4-6 months, burn out, then start again. Evidently,  my previous pace was unsustainable.
• Secondly, I wanted to properly learn photography, from the ground up. While I eventually end up in a more…experience-based type of learning, having a structured environment is ultimately better for me. It makes me feel like I have a better, more stable platform to jump off of later down the road.
• Following that, I wanted to go out to nice locations, with the specific goal of taking photos with my camera, a Canon EOS M50. Previously, I’d dither over whether to even bring it or not. The few times I did bring it, I was sometimes too shy to take photos – it’s a weird hang-up, I know.
• Finally, I wanted to practice giving myself grace. Having perfectionist tendencies, I inevitably became hard on myself when I was unable to meet my goals at the right time, in the exact manner I wanted to. But that led to an internally toxic cycle that, at the end of the day, prevented me from meeting other or further goals.

I had a few other minor goals, but those were the main ones I planned my 2024 around.

So I signed up for ClassPass, and did a google search for “photography classes near me.”

But then, the blogging slump…

To paraphrase, modernize, or butcher (depending on your point of view) a profound quote about trees, silence, and the importance of an audience…

I mean, obviously,  the progress or achievement happened – even most (if not all) soft skills have a tangible improvement after a while. But that’s not really how our society measures most things nowadays, is it?

So I had fully intended to document my progress, but somewhere along the way, I just…didn’t. It’s not even like I could point to one problem, or issue to blame for the year-long blogging slump I found myself in.

But this year has been…a lot – not even necessarily in ups and downs, in fact, it’s been more or less consistent. I don’t even know if there’s a neat, clean way I could wrap up this year neatly, with a metaphorical bow, but I suppose I could give it a try?

My radio silence honestly wasn’t even the product of bad breaks or circumstances – at least, not entirely. It was the culmination of being too busy, living in the moment (as cheesy as it sounds), full days, and a fast pace to make sure that everything that needed doing, got done. 

It’s hard to juggle maintaining an adult life that includes chores, being social for fun, being social for necessity, personal responsibilities, and dealing with unexpected issues that come up like a bad pimple. If adulting were easy, we wouldn’t have so many courses being sold on how to do it.

When I finally did have moments to myself, I just wanted to decompress and just be, rather than figuring out how to best frame it as a photo or video to post on social media. I was just so tired. Cue the blogging slump and overall radio silence on social media.

Even though at least taking photos is something I typically enjoy, this year is the most sparse my phone gallery has ever been. It looks like I barely went out, ate, or just had fun.

Fast forward to about 150 workouts & 500+ shutter clicks later

Hitting a proverbial wall called a blogging slump aside, everything else has been chugging along at worst, or doing great at best!

I’m still doing ClassPass, although I vary my subscription amount based on my schedule – plus, I found a place or two that I like and book workouts directly with them. I’m still on the fence about whether to keep my ClassPass or not, but I do still enjoy hot yoga, meditation, and strength training through a few gyms there.

As for the photography classes, I still attend the free ones that I’m available for. But I’ve also joined a paid camera walkabout or two, and at least one paid class – feels a lot more legit, in terms of checking off my goals!

One unexpected update is that I decided to switch cameras – and ecosystems! After months of self-agonizing, I made the switch from my Canon EOS M50 to a Nikon Z7ii and haven’t looked back since. The only thing left to think about is if I should write a separate blog post for that particular dilemma…

At least my homework for the photo classes, plus the photo walkabouts I joined gave me some good, fun content to post on Instagram! I’m also still considering if I should make a blog post about my little 6-week photography classes – oh well, something to ponder.

Either way, the experience plus the fun photos from that gave me the spark I needed to start posting on social media again. Piggybacking on that is finally figuring out how to break out of the blogging slump I found myself in.

Overcoming the blogging slump

Radio silence and lack of documentation aside, I know I’ve accomplished a lot this year. Plus, it was also rather nice to buckle down and work on myself, without being distracted by the optics of it all. 

I would still love to travel, write, and drink matcha for a living – that still sounds like a dream come true. But more than ever, I understand that living it and documenting it are practically worlds apart. There’s a kind of focus, and determination that I can achieve if I’m not distracted by too many competing goals at once, so it’s something to keep in mind moving forward.

I’m certain that I’ll come across a blogging slump (or three) again someday, but rather than being hard on myself, I’ll try to be more conscious and communicative about it. The fast turnaround and overall pace of social media is exhausting and unsustainable. Content creators & consumers alike need a break every now and then. Although, crossing my fingers and hoping that I won’t run into such a long blogging slump again…