Blogging Insights – Blogging During the “Thing”

Published on by Yinglan

This week on Blogging insights – hosted by Tanya at Salted Caramel – asks:

How do you think this pandemic year has been for blogging in general and your blog in particular?

I think I am going to focus on my blog for this question since I was pretty much absent during the first part of the pandemic which I am now calling the “Pandemic Panic” of 2020.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this many times before but my mind shut down at the beginning of the thing. All I could do was focus on work. A third of me was in denial – ignoring every news article that the world was in a pandemic. A third was rocking back-and-forth in panic mode like a mental patient. The remaining third was full of optimism that this thing would blow over in a month or so.

My blog had definitely suffered with my inconsistent posting and visiting other blogs. I realize I might had missed quite a bit but at the time, I just couldn’t take reading another thing about how this thing was spreading across the globe interrupting people’s lives. Even watching the news was making me anxious.

I didn’t come to term until late 2020 when I was bottling so much on the inside that I was on the verge of mental meltdown. I decided to come back because of something my dietitian suggested – find a safe space – and that is my blog. I tried sharing with a small circle of friends on Facebook about my struggles but it felt like no one was on my side.

They’ve met my mom, you see, and thought she was the nicest person they’ve ever met but that’s only a façade. It’s what she does whenever she meets people but when she’s alone with me, she would tell me the most vicious things about that person.

It’s why I ended up quitting Facebook and just focus on my blog because no one’s met my mom here. No one knows about her façade. No one will scold me about feeling certain ways.

10 thoughts on “Blogging Insights – Blogging During the “Thing””

  1. Time became elastic. As a friend said, the only way she had to understand the clock was by the seasons of nature. I hung onto blogging once a day because that was the only way for me to know what calendar day it was. Even so, there were a lot of mixed up days. Or, wondering why it was so dark outside because I didn’t realize it was 7pm during winter.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I agree, time does become elastic when one is forced to stay home everyday. I was glad to have work to occupy me and I could tell what day it was by the batches of credit cards transactions I have to reconcile as well as the tons of invoices streaming in daily.

      Like

      Reply

      2. I have to admit, I got a little jealous at first. I kinda wished I would get some time off, that my work would shut down to allow me the time to do some other stuff but in the end, I’m glad I work for an essential business because being stuck at home after a few days would drive me insane. I feel bad this happened to you. Is your business up and running again?

        Liked by 1 person

      3. Nah. But, thanks for asking. Almost all of the kind of photography work has dried up. As long as the economy remains rocky, that’s how it will stay. On our music side, that is starting to wake up. But, with current restrictions we can only fill 30% of a venue. We’d lose money with that figure.

        Liked by 1 person

  3. Pandemic Panic is such an apt name for 2020.

    I can relate with how you felt about news and posts about the pandemic. Although I read and wrote a lot about the pandemic, I had a similar reaction to an earthquake that caused devastation in the northern part of my country in 2005.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. At the beginning, even reading posts about the pandemic gave me anxiety because I didn’t like feeling uncertain. I’m glad you didn’t have the same reaction I had.

      Like

      Reply

Anything you want to ask? Want to know?