I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about the mountains. How the mountains were calling me and John Muir. During the course of that post I said that my blog is calling and I must go, paraphrasing John Muir of course. I had said that it would be a great t-shirt. It still would be.
Today I wanted to write about commitments. I know there are posts all over Blogistan about how to divide your time and do everything that you want to. This is only partially about that. We all have our commitments to our families, wives, husbands, kids etc. We have work commitments. We have housework commitments. There are church and community commitments. And, if we want a piece of this wonderful internet pie, there are commitments to our websites and blogs.
My blog is my second mistress. My laptop is my first mistress and I dearly love the internet. It is hard to budget the time to sit down and write and read blogs and comment on blogs and take care of the kids and cook dinner and do laundry and mop the floor, and entertain the wife, and on and on and on. So where do you dig out the time to write?
The answer is wherever you can. Forgo TV for a night, or a couple of hours. Forgo watching the kids go to sleep. Go to bed a bit later or get up earlier. Ben over at 6aliens.com and James at the infopreneur both talk about this. Carve out the time for your blog and your website. There is a lot of time devoted to growing your blog and sometimes the web design gets pushed back. Hard to read, cluttered sites do not bring back traffic. Work on your site as well.
Tell your friends, “I can’t. My Blog is calling and I must go.” Tell your wife (only once in a while), “My Blog is calling and I must go.” (Flowers smooth that over if you do it too much). You can tell your kids the same thing, once in a while.
The hard part is figuring out when it is actually beneficial to just shut the laptop and let your blog call. Devote everything you possibly can to your site so that it will make you money. Throw everything you can at it so that you can have more time with your family when it is keeping its own head up. It will still call to you, but not as loud.
When you are at that point, you can take off and go on fabulous vacations because you will be one of the pros like David Risley, or Darren Rowse, or John Chow even. Your blog will still be calling, you will still go, but you can go from around the world. John Chow likes to have all of his stuff online so he can access it from anywhere. WordPress is like that as well.
My blog is calling and I must go, for I want to be a Pro. I need the cash.
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below:
-Justin
