Blogging and managing my personal website is pretty much my main hobby at this point. As such, I’m always looking to do something blog- or website-related.
As you can probably tell, I don’t post every day (something I’d like to change, btw), so what do I do? How do I kep motivated and prevent blog burnout?
I’ve compiled a list of ways I fight “blogging boredom” and stay invested and prevent blogging burnout which is totally a thing.
Finding Post Topic Inspirations
A lot of RSS aggregator’s have a Discover page or Random button where you can find new (to you) blogs around the indie web. I love Mire’s Discover page, where you can see the 100 most recent posts from feeds known to Mire; websites users have previously added to their personal feed. Mire also has a Random button that will just take you to a random blog site.
I also find powRSS’ Random button is another great option for finding new blogs.
Bubbles is another great site to find new blogs.
Add New Slash Pages
Slash pages are common pages you can add to your website, usually with a standard, root-level slug like /now, /about, or /uses. They tend to describe the individual behind the site and are distinguishing characteristics of the IndieWeb.
The name was coined independently by both Caleb Hearth and Shellsharks. This page was made by Robb Knight.
source: SlashPages.net
Whenever I don’t know what to do and can’t find a blog topic I feel like pursuing, I often find myself doing is asking “what slash pages could I make?”
The best place is always SlashPages.net, but you can also see what other blogs have up and maybe find a cool one there. You could also just come up with your own! The best part about slash pages is despite the description above and official website, you can do whatever you want with them!
Another great place to check is ShellSharks’ Website Component Checklist. I love to scroll through there and see what I can add. I have a Changelog, robots.txt file, ai.txt file, and humans.txt file because I found them on this checklist.
The last two I’ll list here are James’ posts “100 things you can do on your personal website” and “100 (more) things you can do with your personal website”. These were and are to this day two pages I check probably once a week for ideas.
There’s inspiration everywhere.
Blog Archives
If all else fails, it can’t hurt to stop and just do some reading. Spending time in the blogging space doesn’t necessarily mean contributing to it. I like to go to blogs I like and scroll through their archive for old posts I haven’t read.
One of my favourites is Robert Birming (wow, I feel like I mention him in every post lately 😂), not only because he’s a pioneer of the modern blogging space, but because as a result he has a massive archive of posts going back years (as of writing this, the oldest post I can see on his blog is from 2023!). Lots of content to explore and potentially be inspired by.
Another, more recently-discovered-by-me, blog whose archives I enjoy perusing lately is Logs from Lille Ø. The free world of full-time travelling looks so enjoyable and the Lille Ø’s crew post its logs (updates) almost daily. I’ve really enjoyed following along on their journey and living vicariously through it as I meander through my busy city life.
Don’t Be Afraid of Drafts
If you use the push-and-deploy method like me, you can add a drafts/ folder to your .gitignore or equivalent-of to store your draft blog posts.
Here you can keep incomplete posts or even just empty files named for what you thing would be a good topic to write about. This keeps them offline and secure until you’re ready for them to be published publicly.
Don’t be afraid to have a million drafts, but just be sure to revisit them every now and then. You might find you’re ready to ’tackle’ a post idea from a while back.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the things I do, and they work for me, for now. If you have any other methods or ideas or suggestions, be sure to #JulyReply to my post with your comments! (Be sure to shoot me a message so I can see it!)
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