Reader Meet Author

I decided to spend some time today taking a little advice from Darren Rowse on “building a better blog”. In part of a 31 day series of posts, Rowse suggests finding and joining forums related to your blog’s topic. I’ve been trying to come up with ways to expose myself a little more (blog-wise, folks… get your minds out of the gutter) and that seemed like a good idea.

But I’m not a big fan of forums. So I decided, instead, to check out some of the other blogs in my “niche” - whatever that means. I started at BlogCatalog and found a subcategory that looked promising… and started going through the sites listed one by one.

What I found was very disappointing.

There was an occasional good read. A few of the sites listed there were worth checking out in the future. But the majority of what I found was absolutely worthless.

Why?

Because it seems that the majority of people writing about human nature, psychology, mental illness, and the like simply bitch and whine and moan about how awful their lives are. I heard their stories a million times when I worked at the hospital:

• No one understands them
• Everyone else treats them different
• They’re waiting for someone to save them or “fix” them
• The big, bad “man” has taken so much from them
• How dare the government take their children
• Blame, blame, blame
• It’s everyone else
• I’m not responsible for any of this

As I said… I was more than a little disappointed.

It’s really sad because writing a blog could be a great therapeutic tool. It could serve as an excellent way to not only vent and express, but also as a good way to get feedback and help from other people dealing with similar situations.

But instead of taking advantage of the possible positive benefits of blogging, most of these people are wrapped up in online mini-dramas perpetuated by a circle of other mentally ill folks who blame everyone else for their problems. Instead of helping one another the majority of these people are becoming online enablers and feeding off of one another’s misguided approach to “self-help”.

My advice to the mentally ill blogging community: start taking responsibility for yourselves, get off your asses, and do something besides bitch about how bad the world treats you.

A lot of the blogs I read talked about the fact that no one else “understands” what the authors were going through. I have a suggestion to help change that - write about something worth taking the time to understand. You’re all right… most people don’t understand what you’re going through. But it’s not because they can’t figure it out or don’t care. It’s because you’re doing a horrible job of expressing your situation.

Give me something to care about and then we’ll see how well I do or don’t understand it.