RSSIs Blogging Bad for Your Health?
by Yvonne | April 6th, 2008 @ 4:04pm | No Comments
They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
Wow. Digital-era sweatshop. Thanks, New York Times, for the vote of confidence (last I checked, three health incidents in a population of millions did not an epidemic make)!
But it is true that blogging can be pretty stressful; the internet is littered with blog-icide detritus, people who got one too many spam comments or hecklers and took their toys and went home.
Regular blogging, particularly news blogging, is not all that compatible with a regular job. I have four active blogs right now (including this one), and I struggle to make one post a week on each. After I spend all day writing in front of a computer, going home and…writing in front of a computer…really doesn’t sound all that appealing.
Blogging is not a good path to getting rich quick. It is not even a good path to a steady, livable income. Blogging is more like the publishing industry than anything else. For every J. K. Rowling there are thousands of nameless authors, earning next-to-nothing from their writing, just trying to get their voices heard. But unlike working in an actual sweatshop, you are in control of your own working environment.
The key to a long, healthy blogging life is balance and a love of the medium. Stick to blogging what really matters to you, not just what’s hot at the moment. If you’re going to blog for money, blog for pocket money, not for a salary. I’ve been blogging (mostly) unprofitably for nearly ten years, just because I like it. These days, I’m running with the pack in terms of monthly blog earnings and well…the pack would starve if we had to rely on blogging for money.
And don’t forget to eat well and get exercise. Sitting in front of a computer day in and day out isn’t healthy, no matter what or if you blog.
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