I Quit My 4-Year-Old Blog — And It Was the Best Decision I Made All Year
My name is E.J., blogger, self-published author, freelance editor, and all-around storyteller. I’m on a mission to chronicle a year in my life — a year of writing lessons learned from baking bread, watching a thunderstorm, getting exhausted, and everything in between. A year of the good, inspiring days and the upside-down I-can’t-write-to-save-my-life days.
This is 365(ish) Days of Stories: Day 82
My hands shook.
I stared at the words on the screen, not seeing most of them. I’d already read them a hundred times over. The post was ready to go.
But I wasn’t ready to publish it.
“I’m taking a break from The Story Canvas blog.” The blog I started four years ago that was so dear to me. The blog I had dedicated hundreds upon hundreds of hours to.
The decision hadn’t come lightly. When the idea first popped into my head, I dismissed it as ridiculous. But it was there, lingering in the back of my mind, a whisper underlying every thought. That whisper grew into a voice. And that voice became a serious consideration — one that culminated in the difficult decision to put my blog on indefinite hiatus.
Still . . . my confidence melted away in the face of putting it into action.
I was quitting the blog.
“When will I be back? I’m not sure.”
I closed my eyes. Took a deep breath.
And clicked “publish.”
The Power of Clear Goals
Just about four years ago, I started my blog as an outlet to write about my dream trip to the UK in 2019. Then, I started posting my original short stories. After that, I began sharing writing tips, and that was what stuck. My blog became a place where I could teach about meaningful storytelling, one of my greatest passions. Week after week, I dedicated 7–10 hours, sometimes more, to creating the best posts I could muster. Though my following was small, it grew four times as large between 2022 and 2023.
But, in what I’m sure was not a coincidence, several insights about goals appeared in my path. Two different books that talked extensively about goal-setting landed on my editing table. I stumbled upon articles discussing goal-setting for 2024 and even wrote one myself.
Somewhere in this jumble, I realised the mistake I’ve been making all along when setting goals: I’m too short-sighted. I tend to overlook my dreams in favour of my current reality, treating the latter as if it’s immovable. I’ve been working from front to back rather than back to front, which gave me a rather distorted view of my goals — or what I thought were my goals.
When I finally worked from long-term goals back to my current priorities, I saw a huge disconnect. All my life, I’ve wanted to be an author and live off the income from the books I write. It’s the reason I wrote so much as a kid and the reason that I quit my “stable career” to freelance.
Originally, it was the reason I started my blog.
But my blog evolved into something else, and I didn’t even recognise that in doing so, it had derailed from my ultimate goal. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed writing for it, but teaching about storytelling is a long-term goal far past becoming a self-sufficient author.
In essence, a harsh reality struck me. My blog was not contributing to my goals. At all.
Quitting Is Not Giving Up
It sounds pretty, and for a while, I thought that was all the substance this phrase had.
You can ask anybody who knows me — especially my husband — and they’ll tell you that I’m as stubborn as a mule. If I start something, I will finish it. Asking for help or even taking a break feels like giving up.
But I’ve been learning, little by little, how to chill out a bit. Sometimes, the other half of the dishes can wait until tomorrow. Just because I planned to get out of the house to do my remote work doesn’t mean I still have to if I’m not feeling it.
The biggest challenge yet came in quitting my blog — at least temporarily.
It seemed an impossible thing to do. I started my blog before I even started my freelance writing career. Quitting it felt like giving up a piece of me.
It felt like giving up. Like I wasn’t strong enough.
Even after I knew I was leaving the blog for a while, it took me a long time to write my farewell post because I had to realise that pretty-sounding truth: quitting is not giving up. Stopping the blog didn’t make me a loser. It didn’t mean I was giving up. It didn’t mean that all the time I’d put into the blog had been wasted.
In fact, putting the blog on pause is the best thing I’ve done for my writing career this year. It’s already allowed me more time to work on my books, which is what I’ve wanted all along. And I’m not leaving the blog forever; the art of storytelling is still in my blood, and one day, I will come back to build a community of writers that cares about telling meaningful stories.
What Do You Need to Quit?
What are your goals? Have you examined your daily schedule to see if what you’re doing aligns with those goals? How much time are you spending on “productive” things that aren’t actually contributing to where you want to be?
Quitting is easy. We make it hard.
If you want to achieve your goals, you have to examine your priorities. All along, I thought my priority was writing and publishing my books, but my daily actions were not reflecting that. I wrote my stories when I had time; meanwhile, I was scheduling in my writing for the blog like mad.
Set goals. Set long-term goals. Reexamine your priorities. Cut what’s not necessary. And, above all, don’t be afraid to quit. You may have to leave something behind, but it’s probably not forever, and you’re working towards something better. A better you.
Write well, my friends.
— E.J.
