What they don’t tell you about blogging is the battle behind it. I’m talking about the gut-wrenching, heart-pounding, nail-biting inner battle that rages inside you every time it comes time to post. You think I’m joking. I’m not.
Tell me this isn’t traumatic: in exactly thirty minutes is midnight, the deadline for your class-assigned blog post. You have 1,800 seconds (give or take) until a piece of you, a representation of your skills as a writer, a sample of any potential you hope you have—or lack thereof—will be smeared over the internet for the world to see. Yeah, you just tell me that’s not terrifying.
Your friends know your blog site. Your Facebook friends know your blog site. The entire planet can find your blog site. And in now twenty-five minutes, you will be made vulnerable on your blog site. You won’t be able to hide from anybody.
You sit in a drama rehearsal, looking at the clock anxiously. Who can focus on a drama rehearsal when there’s a blog due in twenty-one minutes? And the topic—oh, how the topic pressures you. Oh, this isn’t any ordinary blog; it’s a requirement for one of your classes, and it’s got to comply with a weekly topic. So—get this—you have to earn credit for the class and desperately try not to look lamer than a clod of moon dirt to your friends. Possible? The jury’s still out.
You start to sweat in that drama rehearsal as your mind takes you scary places… Say you publish a stupid blog. Somebody reads your stupid blog. Not only do they never read your blog again; they also turn up their nose when your wannabe-writer self finally breaks into the business and publishes a book. But worse, they come across your future book while meandering through Barnes & Noble with a friend, and they tell the friend they know you, the author of this book—and they tell the friend they don’t want to buy the book. So then the friend refrains from buying the book and tells another friend not to buy the book. And then the other friend tells another friend who tells another friend who tells another friend who tells another friend. And your book barely sells because nobody wants to buy it. And then your publisher refuses to take another manuscript because your sales record is so bad. So then you never get a chance to become a #1 New York Times Bestseller.
All because of the stupid blog you published.
If that’s not pressure, I don’t know what is. Man alive, the freaky part about blogging is the part they don’t tell you about—the war you fight to blog without crushing your delicate future career.
And then the clock chimes midnight. Heartbeat hammering inside your chest, you close your eyes, suck in your breath, bring your arrow over the fateful button, and PUBLISH POST.
I understand completely--perhaps that fear of sounding completely lame is what prevents me from hitting the "publish post" button. I loved the countdown aspect of your post!
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