|
My garden is calling. My chronically under-performing acanthus is overdue for a move. The Louisiana irises need to be divided (again). There are beds to mulch, weeds to pull, and falling leaves to shred. Am I doing any of these things? No. I am inside, at my computer, writing this post. 
Rodin's Thinker has nothing on me.
This blog takes time. A lot of time. I don't even post much, compared with many garden bloggers. It's a mystery how they manage to keep up their blogs, to say nothing of their real lives, without neglecting their gardens - which also happen to put mine to shame. But enough about them; let's talk about me. It is astonishing how long it takes to compose one measly post. You would think I was writing the Great American Novel and not 500 words of fluff, the way I agonize. I spend days playing with word choice and sentence structure. Meanwhile, the weeds have taken over. 
How long did Herman Melville spend on Moby Dick?
It's not just the writing, though. Blogging's technical challenges have swallowed entire weekends whole. Maybe that's because, from a technology standpoint, I am approximately 10 years behind. Of course I need to stay at least minimally plugged in if I expect to function in society, but I refuse to mechanize my entire life. I can turn on the lights myself, thank you very much. My cell phone is a pay-as-you-go job used strictly for travel; if you want to reach me, call my home phone. I don't text, I don't do Facebook, and I don't even like to use the word "tweet." 
"Alexander Graham Bell at the opening of the long-distance line from New York to Chicago," 1892. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.
And yet I have a blog. No wonder, then, that countless afternoons have been wasted focusing not on my soil's pH but on blog's xml, html, and SEO. That ideal gardening days have been spent indoors peering at unintelligible software code. That after a year of obsessing about web stats, I still have no clue how many readers I have. 
Give me a sledgehammer any day. Courbet's "The Stonebreakers," 1849.
So where does this leave me? Gardening is easier than writing. Gardening is better exercise than writing. And when I spend an entire day in the garden, usually I have something to show for it. Then why write at all? I suppose it's because, as Dorothy Parker famously said, "I hate writing, but I love having written."
Of course, Dorothy Parker actually got published - and not by clicking a mouse, either. See you next time.
40 Comments
Coming up with new blog topics is tiring sometimes, but it's a nice chronicle of events in your garden. At least, that's the way I like to look at it. Have you thought about something easy like Blogger, where you don't have to worry about coding - just type and hit "Publish"? 10/21/2013 11:04:26 am
For me, it's not so much coming up with topics as it is actually writing them. I have heard good things about Blogger, but I'm afraid to switch now, lest it mess things up more. My real problem isn't Weebly (my blog program) but Feedburner. Have you ever tried to figure out the script errors in a post? It's Greek to me. It might take you a log time to write these posts but it shows. They are better written than many. "The Stonebreakers" is a nice painting, isn't? If I remember well, it was destroyed in Dresden by Allied bombing. I can relate to stonebreakers as we built the house with stones from the field which we carried in wheelbarrows. At least we did not have to break them up. 10/21/2013 11:07:04 am
Thank you very much, Alain. It makes me feel good that you think so! I, too, love The Stonebreakers and remember learning that it had been destroyed in WWII. Many of those presumably destroyed paintings "miraculously" appeared decades later in the Hermitage .. I gather that The Stonebreakers isn't one of them, though. 10/21/2013 09:56:14 am
I know whatcha mean! Blogging is time consuming but it fuels my need to write and connect with other gardeners. I have no idea how people work and blog every day, unless they don't work. In the winter I blog a lot less simply because I don't have a lot to write about. Have you tried contacting other Wordpress bloggers to find out how they find their stats? But if you quit blogging, I'd miss you. 10/21/2013 11:10:12 am
I'm actually looking forward to winter - at least I can give my blog my undivided attention then. My blogging platform is Weebly (aka, Blogging for the Technically Challenged), not Wordpress. I know what Weebly says my stats are, and I know what Google Analytics reports. There's a huge discrepancy. Plus I can't track my RSS feed subscribers, thanks to a screw-up when I first set up my blog. So I throw up my hands and say, "What difference does it make?" 10/21/2013 11:53:49 am
Great post - loved the quote by Dorothy Parker. I, too, have a hard time getting it all in, and I suppose every blogger does. I have the same thoughts - "I should be out gardening" "My garden is suffering from my lack of attention to it" "How will I ever put another post together without showing all the weeds?" haha And like you, I don't Facebook, twitter, or any of those other things. And yet, I love seeing my garden changing over the years through my blog! 10/21/2013 01:59:14 pm
Isn't that Dorothy Parker quote priceless? It really sums it all up. You're right - the saving grace of blogging is that it provides a record of how your garden evolves over time. But mine would be evolving more quickly. and more attractively, if I didn't spend so much time on the blog! Like Dorothy, I do love having written. But I also like the writing itself, and get a kick out of putting the words and pictures together. My challenge is to edit what burbles out of my computer down to a short post -- it all starts out way too long each time! I feel your distress, though, in wanting it to be more enjoyable for you. I hope you don't get so overwhelmed that you stop posting. I would miss your writing, seeing your garden and hearing about your challenges! 10/22/2013 01:58:37 am
Thanks so much, Laurrie. I'm not planning to call it quits, since I do get tremendous satisfaction out of the finished product, plus I enjoy the contact other gardeners. My real challenge is adjusting my attitude. My goal is to learn to relax and have more fun with the blog. It's funny - I'm not a perfectionist at all in my garden (as you know), but I am in my writing.
Anne Himmelfarb
10/21/2013 10:42:05 pm
Good pictures, Sarah. I, too, would miss the blog if you called it quits. The writing is really good, so the time pays off, if that is any consolation, and anyway your technical abilities are good enough. There are plenty of people in the world who could figure out your error scripts but not very many who can write a good English sentence. 10/22/2013 02:03:41 am
Thanks, Anne. Since I "love having written," I am not going to stop. But I need to get therapy for my CES (Compulsive Editing Syndrome). I can't seem to stop. That's where having a real deadline comes in handy.
Anne Himmelfarb
10/22/2013 02:11:40 am
I too know the sick compulsion to move clauses around and make ever-more trivial changes (begin sentence with "But" or use "although" in the middle?). Perhaps it is in the genes. That is why I could never be a freelance writer--I wouldn't know how to charge for my time.
I don't even know what XML and SEO are! lol Better look those up. 10/22/2013 05:23:03 am
All I know about xml is that sometimes Feedburner doesn't like mine and has a nervous breakdown. I wish I didn't even know that... Thanks for your encouragement on the blog. I would be interested in hearing your take on the subject in a future blog post.
Yes, blogging is time consuming. One way I cut down on the amount of time is not proofing what I write, except for spell check. One draft and I'm done. I don't recommend this approach, as it results in some sloppy errors and sometimes requires me to go back and edit my posts. Your posts read like you have spent some time polishing them, like a short essay. Have you considered writing very short posts, like 2-3 pictures and 200-300 words? I find the key to doing short posts is to really narrow the subject matter. 10/22/2013 01:12:47 pm
Great advice. I have a feeling you are a more facile writer than I am, but you're right, I'm sure, about narrowing the subject matter. As for Wordpress, I've thought of making the change but I'm afraid of messing up everything (subscribers, etc.) and then having a learning curve all over again. Bottom line - I'd rather complain!
Oh boy can I identify with this. Writing does not come naturally for me and I also agonize over word choice and sentence structure as well as how to say what I really want to say. I think Jason has the right idea with short posts and less pictures but I haven't quite figured out how to do that. 10/22/2013 01:16:11 pm
It's nice to know I'm not the only one who feels this way! I didn't even want to get into how much time I spend reading other people's blogs because I already felt I was whining enough, and hey, no one forced me to blog, right?. Besides, while it's time consuming, reading other people's blogs is fun - easier and more passive than having to write my own posts, plus I enjoy seeing what other are up to. 10/22/2013 09:38:04 am
If it were not this dilemma, it would be something else, right? No matter what mix of commitments I have in my life, it seems I am always shortchanging one or another of them. Your garden will forgive you. Your readers will forgive you. Just keep doing what you do so well. 10/22/2013 01:48:28 pm
You are so right. I can't even say that I am an especially busy person compared to many others, and yet I seem to have no time to do anything to my satisfaction. Everything seems to get shortchanged.
Have you thought of switching to blogger? Since's it's hosted by google I think google takes care of the SEO stuff. 10/23/2013 09:46:00 am
I have debated this many times, but I am afraid to make the switch lest it somehow mess up my subscribers, etc. Techno-phobia again. I do use Google Analytics for my web stats, but a lot of what they are showing doesn't seem to make sense. Some of it is too good to be true and some of it seems too bad to be true. I was under the impression that it did track other search engines - it would be interesting if it does not. That might explain some of the discrepancies I see between Google and Weebly. 11/2/2013 08:26:05 am
Sweetbay, to answer your question about some seems to good to be true and some seems to bad to be true: the number of readers Google Analytics reports is a lot lower than the number Weebly reports. I'm pretty sure some of Weebly's numbers are spam (I see a lot of referrals from sketchy Russian sites, for example), but then I'm not sure Google or Weebly catches those who subscribe to my feed via feedreader. What strikes me as too good to be true is that my bounce rate, according to Google Analytics, is 0. Some times it's 2.5 or 5, but usually it's 0. I find that too good to be true.
I hear you! I think I was more consistent with my garden blog when I knew it was only going to be me reading it! I use the "schedule posts" feature on blogger quite often. That way, when I'm in blogging mode, I can crank out a couple of posts at a time, (catch up on the backlog, if I'm lucky), schedule them to go up every few days, then get back to the rest of my life! 10/24/2013 03:18:23 am
You're so right. If I thought I was the only one reading my blog, I would be much less uptight about it. The irony is that if I were less uptight, the results would probably be just as good, if not better. To say nothing of much quicker. 10/25/2013 10:20:26 am
Hi Sarah! The same is here. Moreover, I have two blogs, in English and in Russian. I always remind myself that life is bigger than blogging, but blogging takes too much time anyway. And it's not only writing your own posts, it's reading other blogs and commenting. I can't stop blogging, because writing and photography are my passions, I can't live without them. But, my blogging has changed. I post not as often as before; very often I post just pictures; I don't comment as often as before; I don't have time foe memes. As a result, my blog's statistics went down. Well, let it be. I have two young children, husband, volunteering, books, bike, yoga, relatives, friends, two dogs... I set my priorities. You have a good blog and thoughtful readers. Post at your convenience, we'll wait. 10/25/2013 11:17:21 am
I so appreciate your comments (and your taking the time to comment, given all your obligations!). You very modestly also neglected to mention that you have an absolutely stupendous garden on top of all this. I could spend my entire life doing nothing but work on my garden and it still wouldn't hold a candle to yours. 10/25/2013 03:14:47 pm
Sarah, very often, photographs do favor to our gardens! If you ever find yourself in Seattle area, please, be my guest! My garden is not big and very manageable.
Blogging is quite time consuming, between the photography and writing. Thankfully my husband is a tech-y guy and set the whole blog up for me! Also, I have to be in the right mood to blog and feel at least somewhat inspired (which might be why I haven't written much lately - I have writers block, and I'm not even a real writer!) 10/29/2013 01:20:41 am
How nice to have a tech guy for a husband who can navigate the mysteries of computers. But you seem to have it all under control - finding time to post even with the move and the new house and little kids. Has reading other people's blogs helped my garden? It's a toss-up. I've learned a lot, like you, but I have no time to implement! 10/28/2013 09:21:25 pm
Like you, I've found that blogging can be incredibly time-consuming. 10/29/2013 01:25:13 am
Thanks so much, Aaron, for such a thoughtful and helpful response. And time-consuming, while we are on the subject of blogs eating one's gardens! Your points are well-taken. I've been pondering the comments I've received on this and I think you are right - I should stop worrying about the technical aspects and just concentrate on content. And thanks for the tip about migrating from Weebly. I think I'm stuck forever. It's a perfectly good platform - just more geared to websites than blogs, probably. 10/29/2013 07:35:16 am
This post rang true for me. I think we all have areas of blogging that we consider time-intensive--even if they're things we enjoy doing. The writing goes pretty fast for me, although sometimes I look back and think I should have "edited" myself a little more thoroughly. I love photography, but the logistics of organizing photos and deciding which ones to use takes so much time for me! I enjoy the techy parts of the process, but sometimes loading all the photos into Flickr and then copying the html over to Blogger is burdensome. I used to load directly to Blogger, but I like the way photos are organized on Flickr better. Anyway, great post and I agree--I don't know how people who post more often do it! 10/29/2013 02:33:44 pm
Your posts are always so well written, I'm kind of surprised that the writing goes fast for you - usually the better the writing, the longer it takes. You also seem to know what you are doing technically. I barely understood half of what you just said! 10/29/2013 11:27:50 am
I can certainly feel your pain, though I think I have less technical problems with Squarespace than you have with Weebly. For me, writing is easy, but it takes me forever to take the photos, sometimes over 100, then pick out the ones I want to use and prepare them for the web. Sometimes I don't even know what I am going to write about until I look at the photos, but somehow it comes together. At first I tried to post 2 or 3 times a week, but now I stick to once a week. I like to spend at least one day a week visiting other blogs. I wish I could set a time to do this every day, so I would not miss posts, but that just doesn't work for me. I have been writing my blog for 4 years, and I would miss it greatly if I stopped. But sometimes I wonder if I am going to do this forever! 10/29/2013 02:37:58 pm
You and Beth from Plant Postings (above) seem to be on the same page - writing is easier than picking the photos. It's been so interesting for me to hear how other bloggers approach their blogs, and what is the most difficult part for them. You clearly are doing something right, though. Four years is a long time for a blog!
I struggle with the writing. It takes me forever! I always make my posts too long and I don't publish on a regular schedule. It is amazing I have any readers at all. The self-doubter in me says people show up for the pictures. 11/6/2013 12:37:45 am
As usual, you are too kind. Thanks so much for the vote of confidence. I need it. As for your blog, you are being too hard of yourself too - your pictures are indeed amazing (which is no small thing, either). But your posts are always so entertaining and informative. I always look forward to reading them - although I tend to hate my garden even more when I finish! Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorThe Galloping Horse Gardener is a native New Yorker who packed it in in 2005 to live under the radar in Cary, North Carolina. In 2014, she removed to a new secure location somewhere in Raleigh. Archives
September 2019
Categories
All
Follow the BlogProblems signing up? Send me an email and let me know.
|
RSS Feed
