Its been a month since I last wrote a blog post. A month! I am shaking my head in shame, cringing in disgust. I firmly resolved to work on this for 1 hour a day and then a month goes by. Somehow it just didn’t happen. What went wrong?

First of all, my last post was kind of emotional. I was trying to write about health, disease prevention. Anxiety and how to turn it into empowerment. Taking charge of your own health in a homegrown kind of way, especially when you have to get tested because of a history of illness in your family.

Then there is political anxiety. After freedom of speech, and the press was upheld by your country through out history, of wars and peace and protests, censorship was always an unhealthy course of action, and is now being threatened with becoming law. I recieve information regularly about people who are imprisoned and beaten for expressing viewpoints on blogs. I wonder if its really a good idea.

There is the question of having to be careful what you say, especially when giving health related advice, even if your evidence is all anecdotal. Where does one draw the line? I research health issues extensively in order to improve my own well being and empower myself with knowledge.Am I overstepping my qualifications if I pass such knowledge on to you, my readers? I am a blogger, not a doctor or psychiatrist. My knowledge comes from personal experience and research.

So I suffered bloggers block for a month, then wrote 5 articles at once. But its not a good idea to post them all at once, so back to the twice a week posting schedule.

 

This blog may contain affiliate links. I’m not that big on promoting products in general. This blog is about independent living, overcoming the need for so much stuff and consumerism. My philosophy leans heavily towards voluntary simplicity, so to write authentically about products involves some serious soul searching.

I believe the more stuff we can learn to make for ourselves, the better off we are for it. I want to help show you how to take back your own homegrown independence and free yourselves from the tyranny of consumerism, however, in order to keep doing it, I need to promote something. Oh, the irony…

 I started blogging hoping to create a closed loop of mutually supportive enterprise, to sponsor the Homegrown show promoting Canadian independent music, providing links to their albums and sites for a small commission, but soon saw that I would have to expand the endeavor in order to do it. I am breaking one of the rules of blogging here I think, to admit that I hope to make some money from it, not just develop another creative passion that becomes important to me as part of my contribution to the world, though I see its potential to do so, and shares a certian similarilty to crime that writing poetry and making community radio shows do. As in, just like crime, it doesn’t pay.

So what to do to break out of blogger’s block?

Here are some suggestions if you too are ever trapped in it.

Keep writing down future article ideas

 

Time writing sessions with a timer as well as research time. I lost a lot of focus and time by doing endless research that got sidetracked and went nowhere, and gradually turned into general internet surfing. While interesting, it contributes nothing towards getting my site built. It won’t for you either.

 

Read motivational books such as Getting Things Done and the 80/20 principal, or the 4 Hour Workweek for inspiration and ideas. Keep reading this kind of book continously because they train your mind to spot opportunites in the world.

 

Sometimes the causes of blogger’s block are emotional. Some of mine defiantly were. Doing EFT regularly helps you get through this, as well as Tai Chi, and Chi Gong which are both mind/body excersises that improve one’s focus.

 

As for the 80/20 principal, in the case of writing, I don’t think you can have the productive 20% of the time without the 80% of unproductive time. The 80% is going to be there whether you like it or not. The trick is don’t be committed to doing menial chores when that 20% of productive time happens, drop everything and take advantage of it, write when the time is right.