the ultimate remedy to avoid blog procrastination 35mminstyle

In this post, I need to share with you my view on the ultimate remedy to avoid blog procrastination which is the deepest reason why you do it.

Lately, I have been feeling guilty about not using my limited spare time to blog. Blogging is still a hobby for me but I really wish to move it full-time. Yet I feel extremely disappointed with myself. I don’t have the strength I used to have. So I always procrastinate. And I feel worse.

But let me give you a little context.

blogging

The Ultimate Remedy to Avoid Blog Procrastination

My Daily Working Week

My usual work life consists of working as an e-commerce photographer, image researcher and post-editing graphic 5 days a week, 8 hours every day. This past month has been a nightmare, colleagues have asked us not to take vacation days this summer but I am starting to feel it all.

Before this time when I arrived home, it was liberating to start working on my photos or writing my posts. Instead now, just thinking of staying in front of a laptop for more hours, is becoming unbearable. And I feel guilty for wanting to chill with Netflix or for drinking a beer with friends. I feel like I am not working.

So bearing this in mind, the negative pressure I feel every day at work, makes me desire to work full-time as blogger-photographer more and more day after day. Also consider I am a kind of girl who is much more productive in the mornings than at night, so having some free time to work at the blog only at night is quite an effort for me.

This takes me to listen to blogging related podcasts while at work, studying digital marketing books together with mind healing ones and writing tons of post-its when I got inspiration. I can’t write something on the computer at work. This is the sort of negative atmosphere I live by every day.

The Switch was Meditation

To avoid this feeling of blog procrastination I have found a remedy. Since I hate not being able to do what I like the most for reasons outside of me, I started thinking about how I can switch and move back to blogging in my free time.

What I had to do was taking some moments to meditate and bring out what is making me so tired. As you can guess, the reason is my work.

I feel stuck and one day I felt tears in my eyes and I couldn’t say why. But when I let them go, it was all about the being trapped feeling.

Don’t laugh.

But it was a Friday full-moon night, back home from work, I had tears in my eyes and I couldn’t say why. So I decided to breathe (I also had an event to go to I skipped), lit a candle and I started talking with myself.

Literally. I talked to myself.

In the end, those tears were my work-cage holding me back from doing what I like. I wrote before how my moon is in Capricorn which means I need to be in contact with nature pretty often to feel happy. And staying behind a desk for so long is keeping me far away from my mind safe place.

I know how hard it is to find a job, I am not complaining but this is not right for me.

I feel trapped and with no enthusiasm for blogging or shooting photographs.

When I analysed this, I started to understand.

I needed to go back to the roots:

why I wanted to blog and photograph in the first place.

The Remedy to Avoid Blog Procrastination

So after having realised what was holding me back, I started thinking of the simple things.

What was the main reason I started blogging?

Or photograph?

And that reason, is the push I needed to stop blog procrastinating.

I am no travel blogger but I need to learn, be in touch with different languages, getting lost and photograph these moments. And then write about it. My little hometown has always being small for me, same as a daily job. It’s two years that I have the same job and I am only realising now how this is not for me.

Settling down is tearing me apart maybe because before I used to travel a lot more – I lived in Milan, Brighton and US for a while. I feel like moving is a constant of my life that is now missing.

I do believe blogging for me is my dream job because it allows me, first of all, to be happy with myself and not to get crazy. Or anxious. Like stability in these terms makes very anxious while having the open door of traveling or simply moving in my day job is a breathe of fresh air.

Moreover, I wouldn’t feel the pressure to do the same work routine every day nor to follow orders by people who don’t need my respect. Meaning how is that possible that young managers in a big e-com company don’t know how to speak English correctly? Or how can no one in the web team know about css or html? Or why do marketing people know nothing about A/B tests?

Ignorance is really high. Not so many people are curious, but what drives me crazy is that the people above me have no curiosity or knowledge of what they are doing. And I have seen this at Versace showroom as well.

How can I respect these people and work for them?

This point is a very delicate one. I feel a huge rage inside me. I know how to photograph, how to edit, how to code, social media management, digital marketing, writing and speaking not in my mother tongue but I don’t see any results. Still I don’t have a voice there. I am very tired and I am slowly realising my value which is making me even angrier.

Anyway, I still burn inside my dissatisfaction at work and I don’t want for blogging to be the same. Sometimes I know I ask myself too much but I still feel guilty for feeling exhausted.

The bright side is that I just need to think why I am really doing it? And this is the question that you have been procrastinating lately, you have to ask yourself. Actually two questions:

what is keeping away from your blogging happiness? (work, life, love, mental health, anything else)
what is the main reason that made you start blogging? (or photographing for me)

Once you have thought about these two answers, note them down. The second one especially. And remember to come back to that every time you need it. The simplest things are the most powerful ones.

My Blogging Journey

I once had a dream. And you too, once had a dream. Let me tell you: that dream is not gone. It is only sleeping, waiting for you to wake it up. Like my dream to working full-time as a blogger-photographer.

I tried once and failed because:

I didn’t believe in myself
Others, well, everybody was quite skeptical (it sounds like an excuse I know sorry but it is there)
I gave myself only 6 months to succeed (that’s my biggest problem – asking myself too much all the time)
I wasn’t studying properly for it (meaning I thought that blogging was lucky not hard-work)

These are the reasons I have learned in these past 3 years. I am sure one of these reasons might be yours as well.

What would I do next? My wild self (the same one which let me abandoned my first university degree in economics – best idea ever) is telling me to quit and go on. Most of my friends are telling to change for a part-time job and in the meantime work the blogging world.

To be honest, the second option makes total sense and it is safe but it scares the hell out of me. Doing both with the same time makes me wonder will I be able to do blogging right? Or will it be a failure like the first time?

I still need some time to properly figuring this out but I also feel that rock bottom is around the corner – working speaking.

And you? Have you ever felt something similar? Or which is the main tip to stop procrastinating?

Let me know in the comments.