Why I Haven’t Blogged for the Last Four Months

Hi everyone! Have you wondered where I’ve been lately? Maybe not, but I’ll tell you anyway ;)

With the exception of a couple of Netflix Stream Team posts (a commitment I had already agreed to), I haven’t posted anything since April 29. 

Wow.

This has been my longest break on the blog, to date.

When I look back and try to figure out why I haven’t been blogging, it’s a myriad of reasons, really. But here are the three I think matter most.

1. I needed to focus solely on my family. 

This darling baby girl, who gifted me with my first natural delivery back in October of last year, is already 10 months old! Above are a couple of 6 month photos I took, and below, here she is now:

She, along with our three other children, are the most amazing gift I’ve been given (aside from the Lord and our marriage!) and I realized I hadn’t been spending enough time with them. I had forsaken them for the sake of my blog and some other distractions. It’s SO easy to fall into this trap, so I had to stop writing completely to pull myself out of it.

2. I was worrying too much about monetizing my blog. I felt the temptation to see readers as potential customers, rather than readers and friends.

There is a lot of pressure in the blogging world to make money from said blogging. In some ways, it totally makes sense. Many bloggers work very hard, putting a lot of time and effort into writing, linking up and pinning their posts and other people’s posts, creating a blog site that is easy to navigate and producing useful information that gets views and engaging comments. I’ve tried to do that, and I realize I still have a ways to go in making sure this blog best suits the needs of my readers. So we want to be rewarded for our efforts in the form of money–who wouldn’t?

But.

When a blogger starts viewing their readers as nothing more than an income stream, something tremendously important has been lost, namely, connection with those who are giving us of their precious time to read what we have written.

Commenting and engagement on blogs is very different now than it used to be. The amount of information competing for our attention has increased SO much in the past 3 years, since I’ve been blogging.

Maybe you are so overloaded with information that you don’t have time to comment or perhaps you feel as a reader that you are seeing a lot of the same things on many blogs and websites, so you’ve chosen not to read the 457th post on DIY Laundry Soap (which I actually have a recipe for on my blog, a no-grate version, if you haven’t tried it yet!).

Anyway, the point is, I was losing sight of what really matters. People. Women who are looking to be encouraged and challenged, without always feeling like they are being asked to part with their money.

I’ll be honest and say that many of you have been a blessing to me by purchasing books or items I’ve suggested and I have earned some money to cover my hosting fees for the blog and a little extra money to be invested toward our family’s needs, and for that I am incredibly thankful!! {I will continue to share a few things that I feel are worth your time and money, in accordance with my purposes on this blog, but it will not be my focus. I am also trying to make up some more free printables for you!}

But I had to step back to make sure that money making {or monetizing, as it’s called in the blog world}, is not my main purpose or reason for writing to you. I apologize for that, and ask your forgiveness.

3. I needed to refine my blog’s focus.

This has been an interesting journey for me. My blog has grown from something I wrote basically for myself to remember the Bible verses and devotionals I’d been reading to a website with information on a variety of topics. Probably too much variety, I realize now.

In order for me to stand out in the blogging world, I want to make sure that I’m a bit more refined in my purpose and focus. The tagline of my blog is:

Living with purpose, walking by grace, one day at a time.

I talked at the beginning of the year about how I wanted to share a lot about how God’s grace has such a transforming power and how that plays out practically in our lives. I even started a series about it {you can read it here, and print out your free Bible verse cards on grace while you’re at it!} but then that stopped when I stopped blogging of course. In order to keep with my theme, I’m planning on picking up this series where I left off.

I’m also striving to write about the things that you, my readers, commented you’d like to hear more about in the survey I took at the beginning of the year: raising children Biblically, having a strong marriage, starting a journey towards natural living, and motherhood and faith in general. I also am planning on throwing in some posts about finances and debt-free living. I will probably be posting less often too, than I was before the break, to keep my priorities in line.

I’m a “Jane-of-all-trades” type of person, but I want to make sure I’m not writing about everything under the sun. So I won’t be telling you how we now are sewing all our own bedding (wink, wink).

So there it is. The reasons I stepped away from the blog world for four months. It was refreshing.

Is there anything you’d like to hear about here at the blog? Things that have been on your mind lately as you go about life as a wife and mom? Questions about why bloggers do what they do? I hope you’ll feel free to send me an email at thepurposefulmom at live dot com or leave a comment on this post. 

Here, too, is the first topical post I’ve published since April– The Simplest Way to Do Devotions with Young Children. I hope it is a blessing to you. Have an amazing weekend and I’ll see you soon!