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Giving Yourself Permission To Stop

Earlier today, I finally followed weeks of intuition and cleared out some of the clutter in my life. For me, that amounts to culling the list of projects I’m working on. I write several weblogs/ online journals as part of my writing career, which I relaunched last June, focusing mainly on the Internet as my medium.

I’m one of those fortunate people that can come up with ideas by the dozen, and can write reasonably well and knowledgeably about many topics. But I’m one of those unfortunate people that gets so distracted with so many topics that I end up collecting dozens of ideas, sometimes never focusing on a topic long enough to actually do it any justice.

For me, the primary adrenaline rush is from coming up with great ideas. But sometimes it takes great discipline to get a complete article written. I know that I can do it, but during certain times of year, my idea-generating mode kicks in and pushes aside the do-some-work mode. As a result, I’ve ended up with over 30 websites, all of which are sorely neglected.

A bit of tender loving care to each site, one at a time, for a few weeks each would probably make a world of difference to the quality and quantity of articles, and to the traffic levels. But I let myself get into a mode of perception where I convinced myself that I couldn’t let any of the sites go, either permanently or temporarily. What’s more, most of my sites are “blogs”. Blogs, short for weblogs, are online journals/ diaries. There is often an expectation that if you publish a blog, that you need to post to it daily, or even more frequently than that, say 2-3 times a day.

That means that I had to figure out how to split 8-20 hours a day over 30 sites. It’s obviously not possible to post 2-3 articles/ entries per day for all 30 sites and maintain any level of quality. It’s also a mistaken notion that entries have to be made daily. There are no rules. If you present yourself as a weekly weblog, that’s fine. Monthly? That’s fine, too.

However, if you want a “professional” blog that is earning ad revenue and maintaining a high level of visitors, it requires a long-term commitment just as a magazine would. It requires hundreds of quality articles and entries, and regular posting. But just how many professional blogs can a single person maintain all by themselves? How many projects is too many all at once?

Well, after weeks and weeks of re-evaluating and re-researching my topics and considering my available time, I realized that something had to go. I’ve been toying with the idea of dropping one site altogether because of lost interest in it. But I’ve been putting off decisions about the other blogs, fooling myself into thinking that I could eventually figure out a suitable writing and researching schedule.

I don’t know if it’s today’s fresh, spring-like air that stirred me each of the times I let the dogs out, but I finally put action to thought and posted two “On Hiatus” entries to two of my blogs and held off development of a third. I also consciously realized which projects I should be focusing on for the next several months, after months of indecision.

I can’t completely describe to you the feeling of extreme relief that overcame me when I did so. It literally felt like a weight off my shoulders. In fact, I actually had an immediate vision of a dark cloak lifting off of my shoulders. The tension in them disappeared immediately. My stress level felt as if it dropped immediately.

It’s amazing what a change of perspective can do for your life and your health.

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