Is Blogging Healthy?

Alright, so the title of this post may be taking some liberties. I'm no Dr. Blog, however I've been questioning my blogging commitments somewhat lately, so I'm going to talk about that a bit.

I started blogging in a consistent, everyday fashion two and a half years ago in the summer of 2014. It became a focus to distract myself from worrying too much and feeling aimless. Something that became a central part of my daily routine and something I could continually work on and feel proud of. I honestly considered it more important (and vastly more enjoyable) than my art degree that I was about halfway through at the time, and my blog helped me to do my degree coursework more competently by giving me a place where I could be creative and inventive outside of that stifling framework.

My blog had become the 'work' I was most invested in and it made me feel more human via the continuous sequence of writing and coming up with ideas and topics and wrapping everything up in a neat little space. It was exactly the outlet I needed, and is still a great place where I can think things out for myself, or celebrate something I'm excited about, or just talk about some inconsequential thing I have on my mind. It was and is a really good thing in that it's this endless blank journal for me to do whatever I want in.

At the moment I keep being distracted by other things. I guess I feel more of a vigour for a lot of different things than I did a few years ago. I've slowly become more and more fascinated by language learning, and reading non-fiction on various topics, and even normal things like eating and organising. Life feels different. And I find myself naturally detaching and becoming way more casual about my interactions with the internet. I mean, yeah, I'm still on Twitter every day, but I guess I'm mellower in some ways. I'm not as restless as the person I was a few years ago. I'm happier. I'm more satisfied by smaller things somehow. I'm more secure and accepting of things. Less anxious. Not that I was overly anxious or much less happy in 2014, but it's just different. Subtle changes. And I'm not at university any more, which is where a lot of my stress came from back then.

I guess the combination of some added sense of stability and a slightly widened net of possible avenues for creative expression (I only joined Instagram in 2015, I think) has meant that I no longer need to blog. Because that's what it felt like when I started blogging every single day. It felt like I needed it. It felt like it somehow lifted a weight I didn't know I was carrying. It was therapeutic and necessary and even challenging in just the right way. It taught me I could be disciplined and committed and inventive. It taught me I had endless things to explore and think about and talk about. It taught me that sometimes almost anything can be interesting. My first blog post here was about a cute animals magazine for kids, because that's what I wanted to talk about. I really should get another copy of Animals and You sometime. It's a good magazine.

So when thinking about this blog now, I wonder if maybe it's served its core purpose and I should dial it down from an everyday thing. Maybe it'll go the way of my Myspace, Bebo, and Hi5 accounts and deteriorate until one day it goes away forever. I don't know. I just feel a sense of groggy, sleepiness around it right now. It feels different, though, and that difference is a big reminder that everything changes. Sometimes I spend time doing nice, offline things and I have this persistent idea poking the back of my head, reminding me I need to remember to write something or do something for my blog. And as much as I love my blog, I don't want the sense of duty that comes with maintaining it to impede on other things in my life as it changes.

The crux of it is that I'm aware my feelings and attitudes towards blogging might be changing, and I know that at some point my blogging habits are going to have to change too. And that's totally fine, and I suppose I'm just reassuring myself of that, but even so, it will be a bittersweet moment the day I don't publish a post. It's been a daily occurrence for over two years now, so it will feel like the end of an era to go back to any less. Still, I feel free in knowing that I can post as little or as often as I want until Blogger degrades into a pile of ashes and I'm left standing in the rubble, covered in dust, clutching an old and weathered jpeg of my own mid-10s face.