Burnout. I’ve been there. In fact I just returned from about a two month hiatus from blogging. But my burnout was more self-imposed, independent from the happenings of the DOC. I’ve been fortunate that I haven’t encountered any hurtful, argumentative, or mean comments directed at me or what I wrote. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist in the DOC, but I’ve never felt personally attacked. But I’m sure that has to do with my own level of involvement. The more you put yourself out there, the more you dive into the DOC, the more vulnerable that makes you.

With anything on the internet, if you search hard enough, you’ll find information, opinions, and support for both sides of any issue. So while you’ll find people who have the opposite viewpoint as you, you’ll also find like-minded people. Everyone has opinions and everyone is not going to agree. But by putting your thoughts out into the vastness of the Internet, you have to be prepared for and strong enough to handle people who disagree with you. But that doesn’t mean your thoughts are not still valuable to others.

When you reach a state of burnout for whatever reason, instead of thinking about why you stopped, remember why you started.

Why did you start blogging? Why did you first become active in the DOC? What was and is your purpose for being here?

I started blogging because I wanted to hold myself accountable. But more than that, I wanted to share my unique experiences with a shared community. I wanted to educate those who don’t know what it’s like to live with T1D. I wanted to connect with others. I wanted to be inspired and to inspire others. I started sharing my story so that others could see bits of their own life in my posts, and for me to find pieces of myself in theirs. I started so that together we would strengthen one another, support one another, and together help each other through the ups and downs.

Sometimes I get so caught up in the day to day that I forget why I started. Sometimes when I don’t get comments on or offline about my blog, my purpose starts to drift away. Comments aren’t the reason why I blog, but they are good fuel. All it takes is one person telling me that they love reading my blog or commenting that I’ve inspired them to make some difficult changes that keeps me going. The hard part is remembering that even if no one tells me these things, there are lots of people who read my blog without commenting that still find value.

So from this social media burnout day, I’ve decided that the next time that I feel like I need to step-back and take a break, that I instead will write 3 nice comments on someone else’s blog. Because those comments might just be enough to help that person through their burnout.