The Blogger’s Pain: To be Fast or to be Right

I’ve been struggling with my blog a little these past few months. The changes in my life during this span of time, both at work and at home, have made it much more difficult for me to find the time and the enthusiasm to write as much as I used to. Especially when I spend most of my waking moments half drunk or totally exhausted.

If I had to pluck a silver lining out of this whole situation; it’d be that the thing I’m about to write about has become something of a non-issue for me. But I’m still going to write about it anyway, because on occasion I look back at something I’ve written and kind of wish I’d just held fire.

Producing content online can be a pretty unforgiving task, It’s like trying putting up billboards alongside a bullet train. You either get in there first and get your content hung up in the station, when everyone’s interest is primed and looking for something to distract them. Or you wait and end up having to erect a bill board on the route, hoping people catch a glimpse of it as they whizz by at 117 miles per hour.

The relentless pace of the internet has made so, to the average person, writing about something that happened over a week ago, well it might as well be a year ago. Thus there is this pressure for content creators to record their thoughts and put out their blogs, videos or memes as soon as humanly possible, while the topic is still hot.

For me, this is hell’s greatest nightmare. I’m the kind of person who really needs a bit of time and distance to fully digest and come to final conclusions about how I genuinely feel about something. Which directly contradicts what I need to do if I have any real desire to grow my audience and get any kind of community behind me.

When I was writing and uploading near enough every day of the week, this was something I struggled with all of the time. It was less of an issue with episodic anime reviews, as they ended up being a regurgitation of what happened with a few original thoughts thrown in. Unless of course something major happened that could be a big talking point for an article.

Where I struggled was when it came to talking about movies, or anime series as a whole as they ended. Both of these kinds of reviews, especially if they were hot, hot topics, really need to be out there as soon as humanly possible. When the iron gets that white, you really need to strike it, regardless of whether you’re happy with what you’re branding or not.

Which is why I ended up looking back on the things I wrote in a rush after the fact and had some regrets about them. Be it me wishing I’d attacked the issue from a different angle, or with a different talking point, or my feelings on the piece of media changing entirely after I’d had time to fully digest it and get past the hype of it all.

Two major examples that come to mind being my changing feelings on the Dragon Ball Super anime after it ended compared to now, and my feelings on Rise of Skywalker from just coming out to how I feel about it now. Both were pieces I wrote after being emotionally charged from going into them willing myself to enjoy them, and maybe allowing that rush of adrenaline to charge what I wrote about in my blog.

I wasn’t blind to the shortcomings of either piece, but in the cold morning after, with a hangover and the remnants of the kebab next to me, I feel much more critical about both of them than I came close to being at the time I wrote my original posts about them. (That’s a lie by the way, I never leave any kebab for the next morning.)

Having been months and years since my original posts about these two things, and me having finally come to my real feelings about them, going back and writing a piece about either would feel like something more for my own benefit than something anyone would get a real kick out of reading when its fresh. Much like my Rewatching the MCU series, which I feel has been majorly something I’ve done for me more than something I expect people to read.

It’s something I imagine all bloggers and content creators have to deal with, and I envy those critically minded enough to suss out and come to a solid final conclusion within the same 48 hour span as first having seen the media. Having gone back and read the posts I feel most guilty about while writing this, all I’ll say for myself is that at least I have the wherewith-all to realise this about myself and take that into my posts when I write them.

Because I know my feelings are never fully formed, I always seem to take a more neutral approach to reviews. Trying to ride that middle ground of pointing out both what I enjoyed and what I disliked about something and copping out by letting the reader come to their conclusion about the subject rather than giving them a half baked conclusion. Something I’m sure I’ve ended up doing more than once anyway.

These days, I have a much different problem, one that involves finding the energy to sit down and switch my brain in a writing mode, which is why I end up having weeks where I can only get one or two posts out. I’d follow this up and write about that in the future, but it’s something I still don’t have figured out.