How Not to Have a Heart Attack from Blogging

Blogger Russell Shaw technology blogger out of North Lauderdale, Florida died in March of 2008 from a heart attack. In December 2007 Marc Orchant another technology blogger died of a massive heart attack as reported by the New York Times.

Is it conceivable that you can have a heart attack from writing? It’s ridiculous you might think. But yet in still here we are with the reports of bloggers having heart attacks.

Is it possible? Yes it is and here’s why:

Some people blog for the wrong reasons. They hear how bloggers such as John Chow made over $30,000 dollars in a month. Or the infamous copy of Jeremy Shoemaker’s check from Google adsense for $132,924.97.

The potential of making that type of money is irresistible. Some dive in immediately with the hopes of overnight riches.

But the first question they need to ask is: Would they blog if they were never paid a dime?

Okay, let’s do some math. We’ll start with an example of a go-getter. The go-getter has 5 different blogs on various topics. They write a minimum of 7 articles a week, per blog, giving them a total of 35 entries per week. This gives them a total of 140 articles per month. And you can see how easily the numbers become astronomical as the number of blogs goes up times the number of entries. Ask yourself can you juggle family, work, yourself and blogging without giving yourself heart palpitations?

You can if you follow some of these suggestions:

• Start off slowly. Get your feet wet don’t dive in head first.
• Determine how many times per week you will make weekly contributions to your blog.
• Make a commitment to write that minimum each week.
• Adjust accordingly. Increase or decrease at your discretion.
• Set time limits

If you are a newbie blogger such as me there is a technical side of blogging you must learn. I can be very stubborn when it comes to figuring out how to do something. So I would find myself spending hours linking from website to website trying to figure out how to do certain things.

Then one night at 3 am I said to myself, “Stop! You started blogging because you wanted to start writing again. But you’ve just spent the last three hours trying to upload an html file and figure out what a sitemap was.”

I was upset with myself for wasting all that time. Because the more I researched the more confused I became.

So now I set time limits. I designate certain days when I’m allowed to learn the technical side of blogging. And I get one hour to learn as much as I can. When the timer goes off I must walk away. I have to even leave my office for awhile so I won’t be tempted.

I hope that some of theses suggestions help you set boundaries so that if doesn’t affect your health.

I would love to hear some tips that fellow bloggers might have. Feel free to leave me a comment.

Until next time Happy Healthy Writing!