The Blogger Burnout Advisory System

During my time off, I had time to ruminate on blogger burnout, especially after USA Today's Angela Gunn posted an article about burnout last week. There, I at first jokingly suggested that I would make a chart akin to the Homeland Security Threat Level which would reveal the level of burnout a blogger was experiencing based on strangely enough, pork. It isn't kosher mind you, but it did seem to fit.

So I give to you, the Blogger Burnout Advisory System:

Piglet (Green): A.A. Milne's Piglet is the perfect analogy of the novice blogger. You're wide eyed, you are a little timid, but you slog through your initial fears and discover the wonders of blogging. Also, your blogging audience is usually rather small at this point and many of the key features your blog is going to have are not yet present.

Whole Hog (Blue): You are a little more savvy and you have made some friends in the community and you absolutely love blogging (thus you are Whole Hog into it). In addition, most of the things you are going to do in blogging, you are likely already doing. You've found your niche in the blogging village and you are generally happy with where things are going.

Raw Bacon (Yellow): Of course, once you become bacon (or get to code yellow), well, you can never really go back to being a whole hog again which means that getting back to green is out of the question, and generally speaking, I don't think there are any pigs that are happy to be bacon, no matter how tasty it is. Of course, raw bacon when it is cured and stored in the right conditions can last for a long, long time which means you can keep going back to and putting more in the pan without it going bad. It is flexible, supple and really hard to break... it takes quite a bit of trauma before breaking, and most bloggers at this stage have those same qualities. They can roll with the punches and it takes a lot to make them want to stop blogging.

Crispy Bacon (Orange): At this point, you are far less flexible and less able to deal with changes both in the way you do things and in dealing changes in the blogging village. In short, you are getting fried, and once you get here, well, you are approaching burnout. For bacon, it takes just a few minutes to go from this stage to stage 5, but with bloggers, well, it may take a little longer. If you put crispy bacon into like a soup or other liquid, it softens and takes on more of the qualities of Raw Bacon, especially the flexibility, but like bacon, it does retain the memory of being crispy and it still have some brittleness.

Charcoal (Red): You are totally burnt out, and at this point, it is hard to find anything resembling bacon in this mess, so it takes a lot of time to recover. There are other things you can do with charcoal, like draw or heat your house, but going back to blogging with just charcoal may take a lot of effort. In the end, it may be better to start over with some fresh bacon.

--

And after this bit of navel gazing, I don't think I will discuss blogger burnout very much, though I would like to note that I am currently at Code Yellow.

EDIT: I've made a couple of different sizes of the above graphic available for use at Flickr if you want it, and I can do a few more sizes if need be.

Tags: blogger burnout, advisory system, homeland security, usa today, angela gunn, threat level, bacon, charcoal, code, yellow, green, blue, red, orange, piglet, e.h. shephard