How to manage blog time

Mary Martin, who writes the “A Good Enough Life” blog for the Times Union, asked me the other day about how I’m able to handle scheduling everything in my life.  That includes my day job, my personal life, etc. – and still be able to put a new blog post on the TU blog portal every day, which I’ve done without fail for nearly four and a half years.

Trust me.  It ain’t easy.

To do it, I’ve harnessed many disciplines and writing techniques that I’ve learned over the past 50+ years.  And to do these things… and keep everything moving forward in my life… takes a lot of commitment and skill and devotion and ingenuity.

For example…

My blog covers many things.  If I’m working on a photography project, I’ll always take notes – notes that will, in time, become part of a blog post.  And whether the photo project is a success or a failure, I get to share the experience with all of you.

Sometimes I’ll see a news article that will either make me smile, make me cringe, or make me just want to do both at the same time.  Yeah, smiling and cringing.  Kinda tough on the facial muscles… With that in mind, I’ll write a blog post that expresses my opinion on the topic.  Sometimes I might go back and re-focus or follow up on the subject.

And sometimes blog topics simply write themselves.  Case in point – nearly four years ago, I found a roll of half-used camera film in an old antique store.  I sent the film out to be developed – who knows what kind of pictures were taken in that camera, maybe they were photos of a family vacation or a high school graduation.  Well, I never got that film back from the developers.  In fact, I ended up writing a second blog post – and a third and a fourth and a fifth – about the slipshod practices of this developing company and how they still have rolls of unprocessed film and angry customers for several years BEFORE my little package of 127 film arrived.

I open up a lot about my life.  Sometimes it’s uncomfortable to look back at my journey.  I didn’t come from a perfect home with a white picket fence and the Norman Rockwell idyllic life.  Sometimes I look back at my life and I try to find something in it that is blog-worthy.  And I write a few words about it and I store it away.  Then I come back and read the blog post – and then I edit it and re-write it and store it away.  And only when I feel that it’s something worth posting, worth sharing, worth receiving comments on – then and only then do I hit the [PUBLISH] button.

And believe me, I have blog posts in my draft pike that have taken days to formulate.  Some blog posts have taken YEARS to formulate.  I’ve probably got blog drafts from my old pre-Times Union blogspot.com blog that are still in various stages of draft.  I might get to them at some point.

My blog also has several different subjects and topics and categories.  You might not want a K-Chuck Radio blog post every day, but you know that there’ll be one upcoming when you need it.  Same thing for any of the other side categories.  This way, I don’t develop “blog clog” or “blog burnout.”  You know what “blog burnout” is.  That’s when somebody starts up a blog and announces – with plenty of fanfare – that this will be the best blog in the whole wide world.  Then, after a few posts, you wait and wait and wait and there isn’t another post for about three months.  Then you get a post saying, “Okay, I suck at updating my blog, but I’m back…”  And then… nothing else.  That’s blog burnout.  So long as you keep your writing fresh and have plenty of topics to write, it all works out.

I have no delusions of grandeur about who I am.  I’m just an average person with the ability to tell my story in an online weblog.  This story – and all the ones I’ve told previously – will certainly outlive me.  Maybe 50 years from now, someone will search the old ‘interwebs’ for something and they’ll come across my blog.  Perhaps they’ll enjoy what I’ve written, or perhaps they’ll hold their nose in a pee-yeww gesture.  That’s fine.  At least they’re enjoying it, long after I’ve returned to the analogue dust from whence I came.

I also think about what my blog would have looked like had I started writing one in grade school.  Or in high school.  Or in college.  Or through the rest of my worldly journey.  Sometimes I revisit those moments, and I blog about what happened in my life and how it affected me.  It’s not easy, I’m looking at things from the perspective of time.  It isn’t “what will happen?”  It’s “wow, it happened.”  That inspires me.  And as my brain starts percolating and formulating how a new blog post will look with this subject, I type in some notes.  And if I can keep adding bricks to this foundation, eventually I’ll build a house.  Then I’ll [PUBLISH] the house.

With this run that I’ve had with the Times Union, some people wonder if I’ll ever take a day off and just “not publish” a blog post.  I could do that… but then I have this fear.  It’s the “dead air” fear.  Radio disc jockeys need to make sure there’s something being broadcast.  If the microphone’s not on, if the commercial cartridge doesn’t start… that’s what’s called “dead air.”  And the next sound you hear are thousands of radios being re-dialed to a station that IS playing something.  So I don’t ever want to go a day without putting something – ANYTHING – on the blog.  And not just “I banged on the keyboard six times, here’s a blog post about it.”

This is part of my commitment to the TU, as well as my commitment to you.  If I can budget my time and work through everything in my life to be able to continue to post these thoughts and stories and observations and snarks and “Amish Mafia” reviews and Collarworld chapters and everything else…. then you’ll enjoy yourself when you read this blog.

It’s not hard.  You pace yourself, you set your goals, you set your parameters… and in the end, you have a successful blog.

Really… what more could anyone ask for?