Internet and blog burnout: hold still

In the past few days I've seen messages from several people on flickr, the photo group, as well as on blogs, saying something to the effect of "Sorry, folks, I'm just burning out, have to take a break - I'll be back posting and looking at your stuff soon." Some of them mention extraordinary numbers of web sites and blogs and photos they look at on a daily basis. I'm not surprised they're crashing.

Last February I met Robert Scoble, who introduced himself as "Microsoft's most famous blogger," which was not boasting - it was accurate. He was speaking at a blogging conference. I started to read his blog and suddenly realized that my small foray into the blogging world, looking at a handful of blogs every day and writing one personal one, was pale stuff. There is a frenetic, frenzied world of people connecting to each other constantly. I soon learned why, as I learned more about blogging: the more people you link to and who link to you, the more visitors your blog has and the more quickly you become known in the blogging community. If you're trying to make money, you have a better chance because your traffic goes up.

At about the point I decided that I did not want to live like this and that my personal blog would be for my pleasure and, I hoped, the pleasure of as few or as many people who care to visit. I'd already spent too much time working in nutty situations that threatened to eat me alive. Basta! (translation: enuf, enuf).

I visited Robert Scoble's blog again after a lapse. Most of his readers, and there are thousands, are more technically-oriented than I am and only some of the discussions interested me. His mother was very ill, however, and I appreciated what he posted about that and dealing with it. Soon after, he decided to reduce the amount of time he was spending blogging. Even Scoble could get burnout, I saw. His co-author for Naked Conversations, a book about blogging, soon posted that he was trying to write for three blogs every day and it was too much. I just read Shel Israel's post from yesterday, which ties in with this. I also just read Robert Scoble's again, as long as I was adding a link here, and got pulled into visiting a site he mentions about school design in Livingston, Montana. Typical good blogging connecting!

So the warning signals are out there, but it is very easy to get pulled into doing too much and to panic because you know too little. Too much: on the Internet in general, and too much blogging or photo-posting. Too little: because not all of us who do this are techie whiz kids, or want to be if we think about it.

The problem lies in the very nature of the thing that makes it all work, which is connecting to other people. They visit you and you visit them and soon you're feeling obliged to visit 100 or 1,000 (hey, in some cases 10,000) sites and make comments so they know you've been there. It's easy to test the system: don't visit anyone for a week, then leave comments on 20 sites and you'll promptly see they have been to visit you, if you look at your site statistics.

People often ask me how I do so much. I manage a community service blog-based web site (minimum 6 hours a day), I write this blog (30-60 minutes, 3-7x a week), I write a blog called "Hats off!" for the Geneva, Switzerland newspaper Tribune de Geneve (30-60 minutes, 3-5x a week) and I write two blogs for GenevaLunch, one about gardening and the other whatever seems suitable (30 minutes, 2-4x a week). I post photos on flickr, and the time varies from an hour a week to a few hours, if I'm on a photo binge. I do other editorial, writing and lecturing jobs, but these are irregular. I have a family, with a son who just finished his final year of high school with a heavy exam schedule and who is now off to college in Canada. I have a very handicapped daughter, who is not at home during the week but she's non-stop work during the weekends.

Clearly, if you add up the time, I don't sleep or eat and I am totally unsociable. Add another detail - I make virtually no money at the moment.

The problem is, like most people who enjoy the sociable side of the Internet, I like to eat, sleep and socialize. So, how to do it all? How does one manage and remain a pleasant or better yet, a nice human being? What do you do about the niggling other problem, cash in pocket?

You can set up elaborate management programs for yourself, but I find that even a simple list takes time to calculate and, like diets, they last only a day or two. I prefer to set a couple priorities, make sure I manage those, and live with my inability to achieve everything else. If I cannot manage the priorities then I reassess, which I do about once a week. I try to find the problem and I try to be realistic. I remind myself that I'm supposed to go for a walk at noon, and that's a priority because it makes me more efficient and keeps me saner. I also often see interesting things.

The real key, though, is being kind to myself. Occasionally it is all just too much, usually when I haven't slept enough. I hit what I think of as black hole days, where I just can't find the enthusiasm for anything. Not really depression, just a black hole I step into. On these days, I suspend all priorities, almost all obligations, and I let myself drift. I don't chide myself or let guilt seep in anywhere. I'm on automatic pilot for some of my obligations. I go to bed early no matter what is on the books. The next day the black hole has disappeared - it almost always works. The more often I let myself do this, the fewer black holes there are.

If you're not enjoying posting and reading and blogging and all the rest of it, take a break. Make it as long as you need. Go sit on the end of a dock somewhere, swing your feet, eat a whatever (I was going to say a bagel), and just drift. The world won't fall apart while you're gone. Be nice to yourself.

Of course, money is another matter, and I will happily share my upbeat thoughts on this once I have some change in my pocket again. Don't hold your breath, though - I'm not holding mine. Hard to earn money when you're not breathing.