I remember reading a blog post nearly three years ago now – wait, wait. Evelyn is how old? HOW MUCH TIME HAS PASSED?
Scratch that. Start again.
I remember reading a blog post nearly five years ago now, in which an ‘old school blogger’ whose name I can’t remember, lamented the fact that she had rested on her laurels. She’d built her audience up over some years, and during the time blogging was exploding in the US, she was considered a big name. She was there, she was everywhere, everyone knew her name.
And then she rested on her laurels. She got comfortable sitting at the top of the blogging pile, her name on every list that came out, her audience growing.
What she didn’t notice was that just over there (yes, there, where you are now) a bigger pile was growing. New bloggers, new blogs, up and comers, online magazines, people hungry for money and fame.
Eventually, she realised she wasn’t a big name any more. She’d kept blogging, but hadn’t kept up the engagement, hadn’t found new readers, hadn’t pushed through with the social media. She was finding herself to be obsolete.
It was an interesting read for me, five years ago. Five years ago, I was coasting the waves of success, and I was wary of having that happen to me.
And then life intervened. My babies grew up. I changed my perspective. I grew up. I wrote some fiction. I wrote some more fiction. I published some. I did NaNoWriMo, wrote a book and loved it. There was cancer, death, grief, in its great soul sucking pit of horrible. My life changed. I grew up some more. I stopped caring so much.
Five years later, I am that blogger.
I rested on my laurels and while I’m still here blogging – albeit less regularly than I used to – the blogging world moved on without me. I stopped reading new blogs because I didn’t know their back story. I fell off the lists, people stopped asking my opinion, and when I began to turn down sponsored opportunities because I didn’t have the time/energy/inclination, I found myself pushed off the PR lists as well.
The online world moves on, and you either adapt and improve, or get crotchety and start shouting at the kids to get off your damned lawn.
I clearly did the latter.
I’m finding myself drawing in, sharing less, writing more. It’s an organic change, linked to the growth of my children. Amy is seven now and her stories are not my stories. Isaac starts school in February. His stories and struggles are not mine to post all over the internet now.
Evelyn, while small, is growing fast.
The Internet is fast paced, a super highway full of hungry bloggers, entrepreneurs, people looking to make a quick buck.
I stopped shouting over the noise, and the noise flowed away, like a river parting around a particularly stubborn rock. I didn’t have the time to repeat myself, over and over, for the benefit of people who hadn’t heard me the first time.
I rested on my laurels and the Internet moved away from me.
I’m not sure if I’m okay with that.
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