Life After Stats

**This is the last time I blog about blogging on this blog. This is brutally long. Did I ever mention that I hated being on Twitter? A few months back I quit using the must have social media companion and it felt really fucking good. Instantly good. Like the way you feel when you get out of intense white noise that has been going on for so long that you didnt even realize it was driving you bonkers until it was suddenly quiet again. That quiet washes over you, and then you take a deep breath, and you can actually hear yourself thinking again, and you suddenly remember that you have had a similar experience-- the time you got drunk on tequila with your girlfriends father and he drug you to a theme restaurant with his khaki pantsed buddies, and all the sudden youre drinking out of a foot long plastic tube and singing along to a cover band, then you step away to take a piss, and while youre standing their peeing, away from the madness it dawns on you: "I dont even like Jimmy Buffet, why the fuck have I been singing Cheeseburger in Paradise with all these assholes?!" And yes, of course Im being dramatic to illustrate a point, thats because most people that read blogs love it when bloggers are dramatic about simple mundane meaningless things to make a point. Lets get this party started. Lets talk about how The Twitter quitting made me want to quit everything else, and ultimately made me fall back in love with blogging again--Like every social media tool that is available, there are people that truly use it to clown around with their good friends and frenemies. They use it to stay in touch, reach out, read news, they follow brands that introduce new Dorito shelled food items that excite them. Its not a big deal. But then there are the people that use social media to expand their personal brand, to keep themselves in the light, to increase their traffic to new exciting endeavors that they cant talk about just yet, but its exciting! Follow this link to my preview of my teaser post!! Its what people do now. Sensationalize everything because your shit has to be more exciting than the other links out there. If you only have time to read a handful of blogs, youre going to hit the more exciting link right? There was a fellow I followed on twitter that said something like: Twitter has become a bazaar where everyones shouting at one another at the same time to come and check out the same silver jewelry. I cant remember exactly what he said, Im sure it was better than that, but it was one of those, A-Ha! moments for me. You know the ones? The kind that make people look so terribly dumb in front of all the other people that are already in the know. I would link to the gentleman that wrote the tweet, but I want you to stay right here on this blog and keep reading. Sorry Neil. That tweet from Neil was the beginning of the end, the final straw that broke the back for me was this Klout thing. All the sudden people were tweeting their Klout scores and wearing their influence as badges. I was done at that point. I think the last thing I wrote on Twitter was: Klout says Im influential about not giving a fuck about Klout. So I quit. And you know what. Nobody said a thing about it. Not a peep. It didnt matter. I liked how it felt to get rid of a social media responsibility so much, that I wanted to get rid of more. So the next thing I decided to do was to get rid of my ol trusty blogs Stat Tracker. For those of you not insane about blogging and blogs, and have a healthy existence of just perusing sites that you like and then living and existing in real life, a Stat Tracker is used to monitor page-views, and traffic sources. It tracks just about anything you want to know about who reads your blog: when, how often, and from where, and how many times they come back, and for how long, and where they go after, and so on and so on. People get addicted to looking at these things. Almost everyone has one. I have read many a post where people talk about how they just couldnt stop looking at them. For me, it became a problem, because I was caught up in the idea that I had to be growing this blog. So I was always getting defeated by the stat tracker. I would get sucked down into a bout of self-loathing if a post I deeply cared about was ignored, why did x amount of people like this other post better? Why doesnt anyone care about this thing that I care about?! I couldnt figure out my stats. I was confused by the people who read here. I kept fighting against the statistics. So I got rid of the Stat Tracker, and it feels good not to know that stuff when I publish a post. I dont need all of that information in my head when I am in here. I dont want to think about my blog in this way. My blog used to be this place I was excited to go to. I remember writing posts and knowing personally the 30 people that read this thing, knowing I was going to try and make them laugh, or get them excited about marriage and babies. I was growing up in my blog, and trying to stay connected to my friends somehow, and I lost that. When I would write I never worried about protecting myself from mean comments, or hurting peoples feelings. I had strong opinions and I voiced them, and a healthy enough ego that if people thought I was an asshole that was fine with me. Its impossible to be yourself publicly and not have someone hate you for it. Think about this, just because someone hates your opinion or thinks youre an idiot doesnt make them an asshole. I think everyone could calm down a little on the internet about the meanies. Some of the best criticism comes from hateful places inside of people. Having a bunch of people that just tell you how great things are isnt helping anyone. That actually just starts to feel bad in its own way. The best conversations are ones that are spirited and take you on a journey, if youre talking to someone and all they say, is oh cool, I love that too. How long are you going to talk to that person? Some of the best and most loyal friendships in history have started with fist fights. So here I was in this weird place, where I couldnt stand my blog anymore. I didnt even realize that I had stopped liking my own blog, it was just this thing that I felt like I had to keep doing because people expected me to. There were so many things that I loved within it. Photos and memories that meant the world to me, but I stopped putting my heart into it because all of this business of blogging business was in the way. So after dumping Twitter, and then the stats, I started to feel better about blogging again. So I wanted to go even further, and I decided that if I couldnt figure out how to love this space again, I would just dump the whole thing. The next thing to go was the ad network. I just didnt like the way the blog looked with random ads flashing around on it. I didnt like feeling like I had to write or post photos because corporations placed ads on my blog, so I better keep the traffic up. I like blogging when I have something really worth blogging about, or when I want to share pictures I am proud of, not because I felt like I had to. So I got rid of that pressure, and I really like the way things are looking again without the ads. To be clear, the ad network I was a part of never ever pressured me to do anything, it was pressure I put on myself. Im just like that. If I know the point of something is to generate traffic, then I want to be good at it. I was instantly relieved when the ads were gone. The network was probably secretly happy to be rid of me since I would never do sponsored posts or giveaways anyway. After that I just started to really fine tune everything. I dumped my entire Google Reader, it had become this sea of unread blogs because I would just follow random people out of obligation, or because they read me, so I felt bad and like I should read them too. So I had this reader full of strangers, and there were so many I couldnt keep up with the stuff that I liked on the internet. So I decided I would just start over. Be careful and conscious about what I put there. I truly cherish the relationships that I have made through blogging, and want to continue to stay connected, but I want it to be effortless. I want it to feel like visiting and catching up with friends. The next thing to go was that Google Friend Connect Widget that people put in their sidebar, it showed how many people follow along here. It served as this kind of ticker that if it was growing it meant something, but if it stayed stagnant or if people were leaving, it would make me second guess what I was doing. it was always interesting to see that the majority of people that would unfollow would do so when I posted something I really felt strongly about. Strong opinions always drive people away. So I wanted it gone. It doesnt matter. It doesnt matter. SO this is the big realization that I had. This is why I keep saying that all of that stuff I got rid of doesnt matter. When this blog had the most activity and the most eyeballs reading here, I was the most unaware of the activity. I was just writing and posting and enjoying the content that I was putting in here, I wasnt thinking about blogging as a business, or stats, or influence, or conferences. All of my energy was just on what I was putting into the blog. I was still trying to make my small group of friends laugh. I was living my life, and sharing it. I was having fun. I didnt take anything seriously, I wasnt trying to make anyone happy, I was just being myself. Im just not good at the other stuff. I kept trying to figure out how I lost my blog, how I let this space make me ultimately feel pressured and miserable. I started to take responsibility for my own stupidity and getting lost in all of the things that didnt matter. None of the things that I got rid of contributed in anyway to telling my stories, they were just ways to spread it around. As soon as the focus became spreading it, and not on the story, I was miserable. I decided to embrace the things that I really fell in love with about social media, like Instagram, and using a Tumblr site to visually tell our story. Our Tumblr site, All the Love in the Universe was the biggest eye opener for me. It was just a clean space with a series of photos that told our story, no stats, no follow counter, no ads, no comments, no pressure. I really loved it there, and it reminded me of how I used to feel about this space. It feels good. Which made me want to get rid of commenting here. I am going to end this big long rant here, with a new commenting policy, what I want to do from now on, is only turn on the comments when I am able to be around, and be active, and contribute to a larger discussion or conversation that might unfold. It isnt fair of me to invite a conversation and then leave the room. So if I am around, and I want to get talky, I will turn them on. If I am busy, focused on my family and work, there is no point. I think that will make me feel much better about having a comment section. To wrap this all up, and to be crystal clear, I am not saying anything about what other people do within the blogosphere, Im not looking down on what others do. There are obviously plenty of very happy successful people that manage the business of blogging very well, and are brilliant at it. I just had to realize that I am not that type of person, and I had to start doing what worked for me. My own way. We are all different creatures that can manage life, and emotions, and control our impulses completely opposite of the next person. This is my own personal realization about how I was blogging, how I was feeling about blogging, and deciding how I wanted to carry on with it. I am putting this out here because I want to clean the slate and get back to the things I like about blogging.By putting myself out there through this blog, I have been able to create career paths and opportunities for myself that would not have been possible otherwise. I want to continue to do so, but in a way that makes sense for me, not in a way that people say you are supposed to. I really enjoy working with brands and telling stories, and I think that there can be a way to team up with advertisers in a way that compliments a site rather than taking anything away from it. The whole point of advertising is to spread the word on something, so it wont make sense much longer for brands to continue with this old model of saturating the internet. Their ads will become the handbills on the bar that you end up setting your drink on. Brands are going to have to find a way to slow down, and think about thoughtful relevant ways to be noticed. Brands are going to be forced to have some soul so that they are noticed again. We always remember the commercials that make us laugh or feel something, there is a big void online for them to exist. Things are changing and that always gets people worried and defensive, thats not necessarily a bad thing. This is the last time I am going to blog about blogging here, because it has nothing to do with the story I am sharing. I am keeping this here as a gut check for myself to not get lost in things that dont feel right. I have never figured out why so many people (myself included) listen to people that have built their success on telling others how to be successful. That isnt the winners circle that I want to be a part of. If any of that shit actually worked, there would be millions of success stories. Things finally feel good around here again, I like life after stats.