I know, I know, like the internet needs another blog...

May 31, 2015 10:20 AM

So I want to blog. But I have way too many interests that excite me, and that I'd love to explore and write about in an extensive manner. Help me narrow down (or find an intersection among) my innumerable favorite subjects so that I can write a blog that doesn't ramble.

The purpose of writing the blog would be for my own pleasure (rather than for business/side income), but I still want the blog to have a cohesive theme with a sense of direction and purpose. As opposed to just documenting that day's random thoughts and eventually unraveling into some kind of "dear diary" vanity snoozefest.

A little extra background: I'm a woman in my late 20's with ADHD inattentive type, and I'm also a scanner. So I understand and have come to terms with the fact that having a lot of interests is a positive thing, as long as I give myself permission to explore no more than two or three interests in depth at any one time. That's how I avoid getting too overwhelmed.

A shortlist of the many subjects I enjoy researching or have taken on as hobbies (I know I'm forgetting several):

Ethnomusicology
Film
Mushroom foraging, mycology, wild food foraging in general
Cultural anthropology (my undergrad degree is in this)
Archival work (film/audiovisual) - I got my Masters in Archives and Preservation and am getting closer to finally making a career transition into the field
Oral history recording
Field recordings (both urban and rural)
Wine
Ethnic cooking
Meditation (currently learning Soto Zen, but have practiced several other forms)
Urban homesteading (balcony vegetable gardening, brewing kombucha and beer, etc)
Vinyl records/crate-digging
Interior design
Antiquing
Life hacks (vague but also widely covered, I know, but my psychiatrist recently told me that with as many advancements as I've made toward a minimalist lifestyle, I should consider helping others "de-clutter" as a side gig)
Mental health (particular emphasis on life as a woman with ADHD; as well as depression/generalized anxiety disorder)
Personal style (particularly street style/DIY/style on a budget)

I've considered writing a blog about "What it's like to be a woman with ADHD / What it's like to be a scanner / How I manage my interests" and using that as a central theme where my various interests would be free to come and go as subject matter. But, then I'd feel pressured to make sure that all of my posts come back to the central theme of ADHD/being a scanner/life hacks. I'm worried that this could sound forced at times, especially when I'm more interested in really writing about the subject as opposed to how I'm 'managing' it with ADHD.

So, although I've comfortable with how I manage my many favorite subjects in daily life, I'm not sure how to reflect that on a blog. Again, I want to do this for my own pleasure, but it would be nice to write a blog that is professional and thematic enough to garner at least a few readers.

I'm open to any and all suggestions!

posted by nightrecordings to Writing & Language (15 answers total)

Response by poster: Addendum: I left out fitness (running, cycling, yoga). I only step in to mention this because it is a big interest of mine, and I think it correlates well with some of the other topics, including mental health.
posted by nightrecordings at 10:47 AM on May 31, 2015

Best answer: I'm glad you wrote this question. I think you should write about whatever you're interested in and not worry about tying it into ADHD unless it feels like it ties in naturally.

I have a chronic illness and I've found that many bloggers with the same condition write EVERY post to focus solely on that condition. Sure, it's good to read about these experiences, but that singular focus of tying it to the medical condition somewhat limits the perspective. For me, knowing someone has the same condition is enough of a draw for me to read more: I am inspired by reading about people like me who work, volunteer, travel, have families, and are enjoying life on their own terms.

It's perfectly fine to start broad and make changes as you go.
posted by mochapickle at 10:48 AM on May 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

As a scanner myself I have found that most people aren't interested in my scanning per se, in fact it turns some of them off. I get around this online by having a metaset "photography". This allows me to show the breadth of my interests while having a core that many people can relate to. Also, it helps me to remember that my site is not for "my own pleasure" but rather for the viewers pleasure. This allows me to put a small governor on my big ideas and have a site that's user friendly.
posted by Xurando at 10:50 AM on May 31, 2015

Don't worry about giving your blog a focus. Write about whatever you feel like writing about on any given day. The blog will still have themes, but those themes will emerge organically, unconsciously, haphazardly.
posted by John Cohen at 10:53 AM on May 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You could add some structure to your many ideas and focuses (focii?) of interest by dedicating particular days or dates to each of several areas. Mushroom Mondays, Tuesday To-Dos (life hacks), Meditation on the Ideas (the 15th of the month), etc.
posted by primate moon at 10:57 AM on May 31, 2015

Response by poster: Clarification, and then I'll quit thread-sitting: Xurando, you are correct that I need to remember that the blog will be for the reader's pleasure. I don't think I articulated my goals very well when I said the blog would be just for "my own pleasure." What I really mean is that while I would like a professional-quality blog, and wouldn't mind garnering a steady readership over time, I want to enjoy what I do and I'm not stressed about it becoming a commercially successful blog where I make money from advertising. So yes, I'd like it to be for both my pleasure and the reader's pleasure. (I'm just not concerned about it making any money or promoting a project or business effort.) I figured someone might ask "Are you looking to make money off of this blog, or promote a personal project, or just enjoy the act of keeping a blog?" The answer is the last one. I'm okay with the other two, but they're not really a goal right now.
posted by nightrecordings at 11:06 AM on May 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

By the way, that was supposed to be Meditation on the IDES, not ideas. Sorry!
posted by primate moon at 11:09 AM on May 31, 2015

Suggestion: write each of the topics above down on one line on ruled paper. Now think back over the past 12 months. For each month where you spent significant time on a project related to one of the above topics, put a tally mark on that line. Take the top 3(?) topics, roll them into blog. If there's one more topic you reeeeeeaaally want to add after you get done with this exercise, and it's not something you just started in the past month, add that too.

Alternatively, if you want to be pragmatic with your focus, just blog about stuff related to the field you're working on breaking into.
posted by deludingmyself at 11:09 AM on May 31, 2015

Best answer: So I took your list, and made no changes except to re-order them grouped by themes. Take the themes with a grain of salt - you could definitely make a case for other groupings (Lifehacks and Urban Homesteading could pair nicely together, for instance.) The point of this is just to show that many of your interests already fit together pretty naturally. To keep your blog cohesive, you could limit your blog to one theme. Or you could write about any topic, but group and tag posts as belonging to one of the main themes.

Arts/Archive
Ethnomusicology
Film
Cultural anthropology (my undergrad degree is in this)
Archival work (film/audiovisual) - I got my Masters in Archives and Preservation and am getting closer to finally making a career transition into the field
Oral history recording
Field recordings (both urban and rural)


Food
Mushroom foraging, mycology, wild food foraging in general
Wine
Ethnic cooking
Urban homesteading (balcony vegetable gardening, brewing kombucha and beer, etc)

Shopping/Style
Vinyl records/crate-digging
Interior design
Antiquing
Personal style (particularly street style/DIY/style on a budget)
Life hacks (vague but also widely covered, I know, but my psychiatrist recently told me that with as many advancements as I've made toward a minimalist lifestyle, I should consider helping others "de-clutter" as a side gig)


Health
Mental health (particular emphasis on life as a woman with ADHD; as well as depression/generalized anxiety disorder)
Meditation (currently learning Soto Zen, but have practiced several other forms)
fitness (running, cycling, yoga). I only step in to mention this because it is a big interest of mine, and I think it correlates well with some of the other topics, including mental health.
posted by prewar lemonade at 11:31 AM on May 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

as long as I give myself permission to explore no more than two or three interests in depth at any one time.

Sounds to me like that's an ideal format. Write about whatever you're exploring right now; the process of discovering new things could be a great deal of fun to read about.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:01 PM on May 31, 2015

I disagree that the blog is for the readers. You presumably aren't a corporation trying to optimize your SEO to maximize your ROI on blogging. You are a person, writing about what interests you. So just do it. People who's interests align will follow along, if they are ever find you in the first place.
posted by COD at 12:08 PM on May 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: If you are willing to abandon it if it gets negative attention and reboot entirely, you can absolutely blog for your own pleasure. I have done that.

I had a blog for a time where my only goal was to try to post daily. Sometimes I got pretty close that and sometimes I didn't. I eventually took it off the web and separated out parts of to various theme-based blogs. I recently mothballed a few of my sites again, taking them offline. It's perfectly fine to view this as a learning experience and let natural processes lead to branching and/or attrition. If you haven't blogged before, there is no reason you shouldn't view this as just a learning a experience to see what works.

One of your goals can be to research how to name and frame a blog to group several of your interests together. Another can be to learn to use things like tags to help your reader find the posts they would be most interested in.

Another thing that has been a huge issue for me is learning to write solo, without feedback, without an editor, and have it not turn up full of typos and non sequiters and the like. I wrote well in high school and college. I have had published authors and publishing house founders say nice things about my writing when, say, posting to email lists. But I had a clear audience on an email list and I was replying to stuff other people had said. Writing for a blog is completely different and it's quite challenging to figure out things like "Who I am writing to? Who is my supposed audience (when there aren't currently any readers)? What aspect of this would interest them? How do I need to talk about this subject so it makes sense to them?"

A trick I read about once was to imagine you are writing to a specific person. Not "I am writing for young women in their mid twenties with x interest" but "I am writing for Jill. She is 25 years old and has x interest because...." I have done something similar (literally jump starting one blog by writing it for one person I was acquainted with) and found it useful.

Best of luck.
posted by Michele in California at 12:47 PM on May 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I started a blog in February of 1998 (maybe back before Jorn Barger had coined the term "weblog", certainly before Peter Merholz had shortened it to "blog", and we hadn't yet settled on either term), with the express purpose of taking all of the stuff that I really really really wanted to forward via email to friends, put it in a URL, and let people read it if they wanted to, or not. At first I was ecstatic when I hit 40 regular readers. At some point in the early noughties I had around fifteen hundred regular readers. I'm probably down to a few tens again.

I now have two domain names: One that's relative & family friendly and more long-form life updates, photo albums, travelogues, pictures of projects, the other is that original blog which is generally much shorter link-blogging style.

I have never written for other people, I've always written for myself. And I consider those 17 years of archives a huge asset to my life: "Wait, I once read a study on how college acts as a high pass filtering mechanism. Who did that?", "that number of about 10% stop sign compliance rates for cyclists, but only about 25% for drivers, where dit that come from?", "When did we do that road trip through the desert?"

At one point I bought some ad space on a site I wanted to support and subtitled it "sex, drugs and technology", but it's eclectic and whatever I'm interested in and...

It's a huge augmented memory, an additional brain, a record of my evolving philosophical positions (how did I go from being a raving Ayn Rand quoting Objectivist to a lefty Dem?), and I am so glad I got into it back then.

And in the process I've gained real friends, friends who've crashed on my couch, who've given me great advice or connections, who may not even read my blog any more but who keep in touch through other ways.

Which is the long way of saying: Blog early, blog often. Put yourself out there. Don't worry about your audience. Write for yourself now, for your future self, and if other people happen to read it, awesome.

If you later decide to turn it into some sort of business or whatever, buy a new domain name, edit and curate, and make that your commercial face. But blog for you, first.
posted by straw at 1:42 PM on May 31, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is really old school, but you might enjoy making an account on dreamwidth or livejournal rather than a generic blog. These are more community-oriented sites, and will give you ways to find other people who are interested in long-form writing.
posted by yarntheory at 7:54 PM on May 31, 2015

Oh it's you! I recognize your name and think you would write some interesting stuff. I'd go with prewar lemonade's idea and just write about whatever you want and hashtag each post, with at least one hashtag being one of you're "principal" categories.
posted by WeekendJen at 2:30 PM on June 1, 2015