From time to time your blogging output will decrease, not because you want it to, far from it probably. Most likely it will be because of external pressures or other people not doing their job. Take my current situation for example, for two weeks now I have been trying without success to organise three separate things. They are separate but once done will come together as a whole. These three things depend on other people getting back to me with prices or getting there fingers out and delivering a purchased item. So far I have been let down on prices, ignored when I have shown an interest in purchasing and ‘possibly’ ripped off by a software vendor because it seems I have purchased ‘vaporware’.

<UPDATE: as I’m writing this the ‘vaporware’ has materialised, but it’s rubbish, so back to square one.>

So, without intentionally doing it I haven’t posted on my blog for about two weeks. This has meant two things have happened, the first is my stats have taken a nose dive, where I had been getting a nice upward stats gradient, I now have a graph that looks like it’s got heart failure. The other thing that’s happened is I’ve become very disillusioned with it all. It’s taken me two weeks to try and solve three parts to a puzzle, OK that’s not two weeks solid – I have to do my web development too, but come on… it shouldn’t be that difficult and it wouldn’t be difficult if I hadn’t had to rely on others for help and their services.

Also because I was concentrating on putting my three piece jigsaw puzzle together I had neglected to think up any future posts, again adding to my feeling of blog fade. It’s amazing how quickly you can go from full pelt to full stop in your blogging life and it seems to be when you start adding other people and their services into the mix. Now I realise that outsourcing is the right thing to do, but from my first attempt I can tell you it’s bloody difficult. If you get the right people involved at the start then you are very lucky and here’s a tip once you do find them, hold onto them.

I started writing this post about Blog Fade but I realise it’s about a wider issue. Now that I am two weeks along I’ve still got my jigsaw in pieces around my ankles, but they are now in the right order. I have realised now that what I set out to achieve wasn’t the right course of action, for example one of the items I wanted to produce would have landed me with requests for support further down the line so I’m solving this now with an off the shelf product that already has a support network. So my wider issue is a lesson learned really, I need to plan further ahead, I need to realise when to let go of an idea that isn’t going to work (instead of spending days on research), I need to be aware of the issue surrounding the execution of my ideas and I need to stop feeling sorry for myself when things don’t go my way.

Now that I have cleared my mind of what hasn’t worked in the last few weeks, I have to ask myself ‘Where am I now?’ Well actually I’m no further forward, I still have the same challenges as I had at the beginning, but now at least I have a starting place. You see even though I haven’t achieved anything tangible, I now know what isn’t going to work and what can’t be done, therefore I also know what will work and I’ll focus on doing that instead. I’ve had a two week false start but I’m on track now, I’ll soon have my jigsaw finished… and when I do, I shall superglue it together, nail it to a board and hang it on the wall from a great big hook – safe in the knowledge that I shan’t be doing that again!

In a way it’s good that I had this minor meltdown it’s given me a little more positivity in what I’m doing. I’d love to hear from you if you’ve had a blog fade episode too, please leave a comment below and be an inspiration for others.