Blogger Anxiety: How to Deal?

No seriously, how do I deal? This is not at all a post with helpful guidance. No, this is a post that will mainly be me confessing that I am a mess, and perhaps some of you will be able to nod your heads and commiserate with me about blogging anxiety (which, by the way, should be a “thing”).

I started this blog right before my son was born, which in hindsight, was incredibly stupid. Seriously, my first post was October 8, 2013. Sam was born on the 9th. So when I say right before, I mean right before. Add to that his NICU stay, well, suffice it to say this endeavour did not get off to a raging start. I didn’t even have a clue what I was doing, how to make my reviews look more “legit”, I knew nothing. I just knew that I loved reading, and I loved to talk about reading. So for awhile, this was all just fun and games. But then, I got into it. Really into it.

Now, I want my blog to look good. I want to read all the books and write all the reviews. I want to read all the other blogs. I want to participate in stuff, connect with other bloggers, give away stuff every chance I get, respond to every comment, basically, I want to be all in. That is kind of how I am in general, once I’m in it, I am in.

But the days… the days only have twenty-four hours, no matter how you shake it. My kids are on such insanely different schedules, that I feel like one of them is awake at all times (though this is a bit melodramatic, considering they are both sleeping now).  And as I am sure you all know, life just plain gets in the way of the things we’d like to do.

The question is though, how can we shake the nagging guilt we feel when sometimes things simply can’t get done as we’d like? I had a meltdown on Monday night when I could not for the life of me figure out what to write about for Top Ten Tuesday. Yep, I was near tears. Over a blogging meme. And in the time I was freaking out about it, maybe I could have actually done it. Plus, no one, I repeat no one knows or cares if I miss some random post.

I constantly fret about not posting every day, not reviewing enough, making sure I am commenting back to the awesome bloggers who comment here. Obviously, I want to be reading books, both for reviews and for my own enjoyment. I want to read other blogs, because that was what got me interested in blogging to begin with: I love reading about other people’s takes on books I love or hate or want to read. I want to be on Twitter while people are actually awake, but I am usually the bleary-eyed weirdo posting stuff at 3:00am.

And since I am still pretty new at this, I am still learning. Every day, I feel I learn something new about the book blogging world. I feel like I need to keep making progress: Keep learning more about writing reviews, connecting with others, designing and updating the look of things. And in the back of my head, I just keep thinking that maybe it just will never be enough.  And while that is daunting, I am vowing to look at it differently: Maybe, just maybe, it is a good thing that it will never be perfect. What fun would it be if I had no progress to make, nothing new to learn from it all?

Some blogger guilt may be healthy after all. But, I think we all need to remember that our own biggest critic is most likely ourselves.

Do you suffer from Blogger Anxiety? Any tricks or tips that work for you? I’d love to know!