Did You Miss Us?

We've had a nice month off.  It was definitely a necessary break, as we were aware of feelings of burnout toward the end of our long near-daily blogging run.  We like blogging, and we don't want to feel burned out by it.  But our determination to publish more blog posts in 2012 than any sane blogger should drove us to extremes.  We thought that having a few weeks off would help refresh us.

Then it hit us:  Terminology like "a few weeks off" is a clear indication that we've been viewing our blog in the wrong fashion.  It's not a job.  To be fair, we never really thought of it as a job, exactly; however, the routine into which we fell, complete with deadlines and performance reviews, was very reminiscent of a job.  And while we didn't get paid for doing said job, the amount of satisfaction we get from knowing that other bloggers, and even non-blogging lurkers, enjoy what we do here is just as appreciated as a salary.*

That's when it hit us:  Over the past year-plus, we slowly shifted focus from blogging for ourselves to blogging for feedback.  You're likely aware that we have always been our own biggest motivation for blogging.  We started this blog as a means of vocalizing things, typically sexual in nature, that we often can't say in mixed company.  We needed an outlet where we could write about our own sexual lives, and to a lesser extent discuss with like-minded individuals the things that turn us on and the experiences we've had.  We wanted this blog to exist as a repository of our writings and a record of our relationship years into the future, perhaps even after we've stopped contributing to it.

But as our following grew in the months following our return in August 2011, we found ourselves greatly enjoying the feedback we'd get from an astute political post, a sexy HNT picture, or a particularly funny set of TMI Tuesday answers.  While we continued to blog for ourselves and for the most part resisted the temptation to write for our audience, we did feel pressure to continue posting nearly every day, if not to regularly outdo what had been posted the day before.  Granted, virtually all of this pressure was self-imposed.  Well before the end of the year, we had resigned ourselves to continuing on our regular blogging schedule, participating in each meme.

Wait a minute.  Resigned?  People don't resign themselves to doing the things they love.  They resign themselves to a long wait in line at the DMV.  They resign themselves to paying taxes.  They resign themselves to being lied to by politicians.  We shouldn't resign ourselves to doing something that we enjoy.  We should do it without reservation, or hesitation, on a schedule that works for us.

We've spent a couple weeks focusing on the future of this blog.  We've brainstormed ideas for new posts.  We've thought about activities in which we could engage that might inspire future posts.  We've picked at the threads of potential erotic stories in the hopes of bringing to life something promising.  We considered various means of preventing overwork and the burnout that is likely to accompany it.

So we're back, more or less.  That doesn't mean that we're going to blog as regularly as we did last year.  That was never a pace we were going to be able to sustain for long, and the fact that we did so as long as we did says something about us, I guess.  But don't expect us to start participating regularly in memes just yet.  No, a gradual return seems the wisest course of action here, and will hopefully enable us to publish the kind of original non-meme content that was our original intention.

Yes, I realize that in doing so our readership may decline.  It's likely declined significantly in the last month; I'm certain that, in light of four weeks with no posts, many readers are now former readers.  Not participating in TMI Tuesday, Sinful Sunday, Wicked Wednesday and the like every week is unlikely to change that.  On the other hand, we broke 200,000 page views sometime in January, so it stands to reason that people are still checking us out.

If you've read this far, thanks.  We appreciate you sticking around!

*Well, almost.