By Maria of Immoral Matriarch

It’s very, very easy to become sucked into blogging and for it to begin taking up way too much of your time. You begin to read, and write, and comment, and subscribe and all of a sudden it begins to feel like a job more than a hobby. The enjoyment can be drained out of it, leaving you with this perceived commitment to…the internet. Sad, eh? Yeah, being guilty of it, I know, and I’ve taken some steps to rid myself of this pesky obsession.

1. Remember why you started blogging in the first place.

Remind yourself of it constantly. Most likely, you began blogging for yourself, correct? You wanted a place to record your thoughts, and your day? Maybe you wanted a journal that was open to the rest of the world, and also talked back occasionally. You didn’t start it for popularity, or to make other people happy, or to make yourself miserable. So don’t.

2. Realize that ‘mark all as read’ is your friend.

I know, I know - sometimes it can seem so cruel to not even glance at the words of your friends but it has to be done sometimes. When your Google Reader is bursting at the seams, or when you see the number of new posts and your mood darkens instead of brightens, just click it. Mark all as Read loves you, and your sanity. You don’t owe these people anything, and since they, hopefully, have lives outside of their blogs as well, they will understand.

3. Don’t pressure yourself to comment all the time.

Yes, reciprocation and expansion of your community is nice, but if you don’t have anything to say - or you don’t have the time - that’s alright. No, trust me - it’s totally ok. As soon as you begin commenting just for the sake of commenting, you’ll find yourself looking down at the clock and wondering where your day went. That’s not a good thing. If you only have a limited amount of time everyday that you can dedicate to blogging, make sure you don’t stray out of it.

4. Set up a schedule for yourself, if you find that you can’t stop reading/writing/checking/emailing.

Limit yourself to one hour a day, or one day a week to catch up and interact with other blogs. Create a ‘workflow ‘ to streamline the way you operate online. It will help, greatly.

5. If all else fails, take a break.

Just stop all things blogging altogether: including reading others. Don’t come back until you’ve realized that your time is more valuable than that. There is more that can be done with your day than sitting in front of a computer, so each entry you write is special. Each comment that you leave is a great thing. The frequency doesn’t matter - it’s the fact that you took time out of your day to make someone else’s brighter, with your presence in the blogosphere.

How do you keep from having blog overdose?