Speaking of TIME: Quality Content is Very Time Consuming!

It is 11:42 am...

As I sit down to start on another blog post.

So often, I wind up getting to the end of the day, only to discover that I got a fraction of the things done, that I wanted to get done. Part of that relates to spending far more time on blogging than I had planned.

But why? How?

Winter flowers

I have been a blogger for close to 25 years. In the course of that quarter century, the one thing I have held fast to is that I would only publish something I felt OK about standing behind and declaring "Yes, this is mine!"

Since I'm a pretty picky person, that means I have chosen the path of what some might call "Quality Content," or at least my interpretation of quality content.

To some, it might signal that I am just being far too persnickety about my publications. And that's OK. To each their own.

Where I have always allowed myself a lot of latitude is in the subject matter of what I write. I have long since given up on the idea that I must pick "serious" or "popular" topics to write about.

Center of a pink rhododendron, getting ready to bloom

I suppose you could argue that I am not being very good at "maximizing my rewards" with my writing... but I am not really willing to sacrifice authenticity in service of popularity. If that means I'll never be "successful," then so be it.

In truth, I am somewhat "neurodivergent" so most mass market things and ideas tend to hold little interest to me... so I stick to relating personal experiences, writing commentary on the human condition and occasional delvings into psychology and philosophy.

I once heard the experience of neurodivergence characterized as "feeling like the only sober person in a roomful of drunks... or vice-versa" and that description has long felt like one of the most accurate I have come across.

It is now 11:53 am...

I'm about 250 words into this post, and now I am seriously considering whether to branch off and do some research on neurodivergence. But I think I'll skip it, in the interest of expediency.

So, getting back to this "quality" idea...

Whereas I write almost all of my posts in a flow-of-consciousness style — without any pre-planning — a lot of extra time goes into making sure everything not only reads well, but also is formatted nicely and fully checked for typos, awkward grammar and so forth.

Then there's the addition of images.

I have always used my own photography to illustrate my posts... maybe that's just a sort of "applied laziness," in the sense that if the photo is mine, there's never going to be any questions or suspicions as to origins, plagiarism, copyrights, and all that stuff. My photography is by no means genius, so what you're really seeing me do here is jump over the proverbial fence at its lowest point.

Wild yellow iris in a marsh; Ocean Shores, Washington

For the most part the photos don't relate directly to what I write about... their purpose is primarily to put "pretty visuals" into a wall of text, so as to make it easier to read.

Of course, I don't just dump the raw files from my camera into my posts... I find the right images, crop them, color correct them, resize them (down) to not be "bandwidth hogs" and add them to my "Blurt Posts" folder before uploading them.

I wonder whether anyone actually reads any of this stuff...

When I get to the end of the whole text-and-images part of the experience, everything gets proofread a second time — perhaps a sort of hangover from my days of submitting articles to print magazines — and then I add appropraite footers and what have you.

And the footer isn't just "copy pasta" from my previous post... because I pause to take time to add a new set of questions at the bottom of the post to encourage engagement.

Happy bee on a spring dandelion

I don't have enough of a following/readership here on Blurt for that to mean much... but simply "inviting comments" typically gets little more than the occasional "nice post" which I find relatively meaningless; like an anonymous footprint in the snow. Hopefully, that part will get better, over time!

But wait... we're not done yet!

Then there's the part in which tags must be added. Tags that somehow summarize 500 (or more) words of text.

And maybe there are beneficiaries to the post, and there's a preferred thumbnail to choose, and perhaps a customized summary line to add.

It is now 12:09 pm...

And I have made it to the end of my initial rough draft. Time to find and add some images and polish this up; and add a footer, tags and all that!

It is now 12:44 pm...

Which means I have spent a little over an hour creating this.

When all is said and done, maybe I'll end up with 50% of +/- $1.50 as a "reward" for my efforts, so clearly I am not in this "for the money!"

Thanks for visiting my blog, and have a great week!

How about YOU? Do you think "quality content" matters? Do you have a personal routine/process you go through, when creating a post? How long does it take you to create a post? Have you ever actually TIMED it? DO leave me a comment — engagement matters! Communities are built because people INTERACT with each other through the content that's created! This is SOCIAL media, after all. So share your opinion, be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer all worthy comments!

Sequence: 090 — Timestamp: 2025.02.17 - 12:47 PST

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