This is probably not the title you’re expecting to see after I come off my months-long hiatus from blogging. But maybe some of you are not surprised either.

For weeks before I took my blogging break, a part of me has been resisting blogging. In fact, each time I thought about writing a blog post, I felt tired. Really tired.

Maybe it was just 2020 getting to me. It has been an exhausting year for the world. In Malaysia, it was a double whammy with a new government taking over unexpectedly just as COVID-19 lockdowns began. For me, it was a triple whammy because I had to deal with a career shift and a pandemic disrupting the plan I laid out for said shift, on top of all that. 

I think what’s awful about the whole situation is that COVID-19 shistorm 2020 has affected my hobbies – the things that once brought me joy no longer do. I can barely focus on reading the romance or thriller novels that used to bring me such pure joy. So, I suppose it’s natural that blogging has been affected.

But I think it’s deeper than that. My disquiet was bubbling even before the pandemic struck. The truth was, I hate what blogging has become. I hate that to get readers or even for my blog to matter, I have to do all the things.

In short:

Marketing has assimilated blogging and I hate it

Which is ironic because that’s what I do for my day job. But that’s also part of the reason why I burnt out on blogging the last few months. 

From Monday to Friday, I work as a content strategist for a corporation. In my 9 to 5, I worry about web traffic, keywords and optimising for SEO; I scrutinise social media analytics and track our digital marketing campaigns. I create month-long editorial calendars to ensure our brand message gets across to our customers and audience. I manage numerous content marketing projects. I have a dozen deadlines a week.

And then on Saturday and Sunday … I have to do it all over again?

These days, blogging on elizabethtai.com feels too much like what I do for my day job and I’m over it.

The numbers game is exhausting

Those who have been around the blogging world know this: blogging is no longer the same beast it was 10 years ago.

These days, it’s all about the numbers.

What’s your monthly traffic?

How many followers do you have on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Linkedin/Tiktok/whatnot?

What keywords are you ranking for?

If you do a search about blogging, the top articles that come out are the ones telling you how to succeed in blogging so that you can rake in the cash.

But damn it, I don’t want to have to think about SEO, web traffic and social media followers when I’m trying to forget about work and have fun.

Blogging no longer feels authentic. Bad marketers are poisoning the well.

My inbox is filled with requests from companies asking me to place a link to their website. Or to write articles for them, or to “partner” with them.

Most of these requests are garbage and I ignore them. However, damn it are they persistent, emailing “reminders” if I don’t respond. It’s become a bloody chore deleting their emails.

I get why companies are approaching bloggers to get their message out there. Heck, there’s even a name for people like me – micro influencers. As more and more readers start getting suspicious of content from million-follower-influencers, marketers are approaching smaller bloggers like me to publicise them so that the message appears more authentic. Feh. I wish.

First, if you want to do this, be sure to pay us decent money. Don’t insult us by saying that you’re giving us exposure or, like a bookstore once told me: “the pleasure of furthering the reading habit”. Our time is precious, we pay for web hosting and take a lot of time crafting content for our blog. If you are not willing to pay for advertising (because this is precisely what it is), perhaps you should just close shop.

Secondly, we instantly know that you’re just spamming us when your content doesn’t fit our message. I’ve had limousine companies, gambling portals (wakaka on a personal finance blog!), bathtub and plumbing companies approach me.

I’ve received maybe a hundred over requests over the years and have only accepted one sponsorship arrangement. Our content aligned, and they obviously did their research on me. But it’s frustrating to have to deal with all these random, spammy emails to get to the genuine ones.

Money, money, money!

You may be an exception, but with all these money-making opportunities around now, almost everyone who starts a blog these days want to monetise it.

When I started elizabethtai.com, I didn’t have that goal in mind. All I wanted to do was to create a digital shopfront for my freelance writing and author business. (I was living in Australia then, doubling as a nursing assistant training to be an RN and freelance writer/author.)

After more than a decade of solid journalism work behind me, I wanted to tell the world what I was capable for.

Sure, my website had a blog function, but I mostly ignored it. Occasionally, I would write about fun things I did in Australia and reminisced about some of my writing assignments but that’s about it.

But thanks to the magic of SEO and word of mouth, I managed to get freelance work and even an interview on Australia’s ABC radio because of them!

However, I was adamant against peppering my blog with ads. Sorry bloggers, but I really can’t stand blogs that have ads every few paragraphs. Such terrible user experience!

I was also firmly against writing for a niche. I’ve always been a generalist – even as a journalist. I knew that if I consistently wrote about one topic for years on end, I would grow to resent and hate it.

I am only human, however. As 2020 rolled in and I started my business, I began wondering if I could pull in more sponsorship and freelance assignments through my blog in a more systematic way.

Originally, I started writing about personal finance because I wanted people not to make the same mistakes I did. Somehow, these posts attracted the attention of companies such as AIA and Creador, who approached me to write articles for them. As I got more of these writing opportunities, I began to write more personal finance articles, optimising them for SEO, sometimes spending days writing months’ worth of articles, hoping to attract more of them.

I started caring about the numbers and doing all the things.

I began niching my blog, despite my reservations.

But as I did this more and more, the fun was slowly but surely leeching away from my blogging.

I was doing exactly what I was doing at my day job during my off days. And it felt like work never ends.

I no longer want to blog for an algorithm

I am a “granny” when it comes to blogging. I started blogging in 1999. Heck, some of my readers weren’t even born yet! 

I remember building my first blog in my university’s computer lab in Perth. There weren’t any blogging platforms then, so I had to build each blog page painstakingly by coding them. My first blog post lived on a free website provider called Geocities (if you know them, hello you’re probably my age). The post was about a solo squash game in my university campus. The post had no purpose beyond me wanting to write about how lonely it was to be an international student in Australia, and how difficult it was to make friends Down Under.

I didn’t care if anyone read that post or if I would attract a sponsorship deal. I wrote it because I wanted to express myself.

I want to not care again. I want to write about what I want to write and not have a monthly editorial calendar. I want to not write my articles around a bloody keyword, in the right order, volume and frequency, so that it’ll rank and be found. I want to not care about being read, or for sponsors to find me.

Am I really a personal finance blogger … or something else?

I love personal finance. But to a point.

Actually, I am a contradiction. Although I feel that it’s our responsibility to be good stewards of our finances, a big part of me is toying with the idea of living a life of voluntary simplicity. While many PF bloggers admire financial gurus like Dave Ramsey or FIRE heroes like Tanja Hester or Mr. Money Moustacche, my heroes are Princess Alice of Battenberg and Robert Greenfield who gave most of their money away and lived/lives a life of voluntary poverty!

I’m not sure what that says about my stance on personal finance except that it’s “out of the box”. Sometimes, I can’t relate to posts about bitcoin, dividend investing and insurance. At times, am disturbed by what I read in the personal finance sphere because everyone seems so obsessed about making more money or optimising it. I feel that there’s something missing, or that the whole spirit of it rubs against my soul wrong, somehow.

This is not to say that bloggers are a greedy bunch, but that perhaps my values are not 100% in sync with them and I’ve not found my “kawan” in this realm. Maybe there’s a niche (that blasted word again) that exists for me that I’m not aware exists yet. The “PF blogger who hopes to live like a hermit/nun someday” niche, perhaps??

What I should do, however, is to stay true to myself and blog whatever the heck I want, even if it impacts my rice bowl. That’s admittedly harder than I thought, due to my money issues, but it’s a goal I’m striving towards.

So what now?

So, if you’re among my few hundred subscribers that care, don’t worry, I’m not bowing out of blogging.

After all, I’m a writer and writers will wilt if they stop writing!

What I’m going to do is to regain my blogging joy by writing from my heart instead of for an algorithm or to attract sponsorship deals.

So, this may mean more random topics – maybe, one day a gardening diary, and another day, a recipe from my mum and yet another day, a post about how it’s like being a content strategist. 

This blog, after all, is named after me, and should reflect my many, many interests!

This will mean posts that are more like diaries rather than how-tos and guides. This could also mean writing on a less frequent basis.

Also, I am starting a kdrama blog (lol, more on that later). I want to blog about something non-money and work-related and have pure fun, for once!

Your thoughts?

If you’re a blogger, how do you feel about the current state of blogging?

Are you, too, struggling with being authentic on your blog or is this all a business for you (not a bad thing, mind)?

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Old comments

Read the old Disquss comments for this post.

Emilie
I totally agree with this. I am a blogger as well and honestly all the things that need to be done to get exposure and monetize my blog makes me never want to touch it again. 😅 And I hate that I feel that way because I love my blog. Like you though, I want blogging to be an outlet. Algorithms have really kind of destroyed the fun of everything online. It really sucks that it’s a constant competition to get seen in general. The algorithm should be working for us, not all of us working for the algorithm. Just my two cents!

Bonnie
Haha, I remember Geocities!

Good on you Elizabeth. Blogging from the heart is not only rewarding, but it’s great self care. I began blogging in the early 2000s on different platforms.

My current blog is one I’ve had since 2009 as a reading journal. I got overwhelmed with the stats, feeling pressured to get more traffic coming my way, but one thing I always did was avoid monetising my blogs. I love to write and I love to blog. Except I got bogged down by the pressure to create content and drive up traffic. It became exhausting and I burnt out. I even stopped reading books (which I loved as much as writing).

I had a very long break from blogging and have realised now I do want to blog and I just want to do it for the fun of it. I ignore the stats page. I don’t care about traffic. I share my blog in case anyone wants to read it, but I’m not bothered if no one visits or comments. If they do, it warms my heart, but that’s it. I use my blog as a way to keep writing, as a way for me to remember what I’ve read, and I give myself permission to change it up whenever I want, but I also only blog if I feel like it.

A’ishah Kamaludin
Hi Elizabeth! I recently revisited my blog after years of not really blogging and found your comment on one of my posts, which brought me here (Thanks for dropping your comments, now I found you – which I’m so inspired by, after having read most of your blog posts). I started my blog to practice writing at first (because I thought I was not a good writer or blogger). Then, I successfully did a career shift from a scientist > a writer (which I’m so grateful about), yet that makes me in the same boat as you! Monday to Friday, creating content for my company until I have no more the juice/energy to do it again over weekends. I am excited to share different things, which, if I were to write about them, would blur the boundary of topics in my blog. I haven’t really blogging yet, but I guess, I’m just gonna throw some random things that makes me happy, than not posting at all. All the best to us!

Elizabeth Tai
What an inspiring career shift! What helped me in the content department is to start a personal knowledge management system. That has really helped me a lot with writing. That, and creating a cache of blog posts ahead of time. Meaning, I produce 10 over posts to schedule for a few months. All these helped, but I try not to pressure myself to be consistent. After all, this is supposed to be an enjoyable hobby!