The Ugly Truth About Blogging in 2026: A Personal Rant & Reflect
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Hi guys and happy Fridays to ya!
I’m doing something completely out of the norm for me (at least on this blog), and getting kinda personal..
That’s right; I’m doing a complete 180 from my normal blog post programming and sharing an ugly truth that has been weighing on me for a little bit now.
And before I start to overthink the point of this whole post and decide against it, let me get it out!
Sooo basically, when I first started my website in 2020, it was an attempt at a side hustle, and I treated it as such from the very start.
By this I mean I tried to stay within a specific niche (cause God forbid you go outside of the oh-so-important niche every beginner blogger course preaches about), and I treated my website as strictly business.
For me, that meant the goal of every post was to:
- Rank on Google
- Be Pinterest-perfect
…and pretty much nothing else in between.
For some people, this approach works out great and brings them tons of success.
But, for me, if I’m being completely real, it took away my writer’s voice almost entirely, as well as the inspiration that lead me to starting this blog in the first place.
Every element of every post, down to the sentences I wrote was with SEO in mind, and it pretty much zapped the enjoyment out of writing altogether for me.
The crappiest part of that if I’m being 100% transparent is that Google SEO is still a huge roadblock for me.
What I’m really trying to say is that the ugly truth about blogging in 2026 is that blogging isn’t blogging anymore.
You are told that if your blog is going to be successful, you SHOULD ONLY write to solve someones problem or teach them how to do something (“How to Have a Glow Up in 1 Week”) or the infamous “Ideas/Lists” type of posts (“Top 10 Best Decor Ideas Ever”).
Which I think should account for MOST of your posts, especially if you’re treating it as a business, because ROI is a real thing.
BUT, for me at least, these types of posts come a dime a dozen and aren’t necessarily adding any significant value without some personalization.
The personalization is what connects you to your audience and it’s no surprise that the posts that get the most comments and feedback for me are almost always the ones where I’m speaking from personal experience and adding new, fresh info straight from my brain!
Since I’m having such a true ‘aha’ moment, let’s keep going with this.
Over the years, I have remained what I like to call “consistently inconsistent” in the frequency of my posts.
And if I’m being honest with myself as to the reason why, it’s pretty obvious that it’s because all of the over-analyzation leads to depersonalization which causes me to freeze…and stall….and procrastinate.
So I guess this is my attempt at full transparency, as well as a symbol of turning over a new leaf over here. I REALLY want to get my passion for writing back, and I want to tap back in to my own inner dialogue when writing posts.
It’s my belief (& hope!) that once I start to get comfortable with putting in more of my own personal touch, it will put me back in the flow of enjoying writing and putting out more content altogether.
Because the reality is that in a world of AI and readily available information, the only way blogging will survive or compete with it is by adding real, human emotion and insight.
And that my friends, can’t be replicated…at least not yet that is…
But anyways, back to my point 🙂
Going forward I am putting the following into the *Universe*:
- I will not let my fear of making mistakes prevent me from putting out regular blog posts
- I will let my own voice shine through in my posts
While we’re on the topic of getting personal, along with finding my voice again, I do want to get in the habit of adding more of my own personal photos to my posts, and explore the photography side of blogging.
So without further ranting, I’m going to end this here and refrain from looking at how bad the Yoast SEO Plugin ratings are for this post.
If you’re a fellow blogger here in 2026 and also feel like blogging has started to become more of a chore than a hobby, I’d looove to hear your thoughts and advice for changing perspective and pushing through.
I’ll leave you here with this cute little landscape of tulips from my recent Chicago trip.
Happy Spring and talk very soon!!!
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I very much resonate with this. I started my own travel blog back in 2021 and went all in on optimizing everything for search engines. It actually worked in the beginning, but the grind eventually sucked the soul right out of me, and every new Google update made writing less and less enjoyable as traffic kept dropping for incredibly frustrating reasons. Nowadays, I no longer publish with SEO in mind and have even started writing on Substack while keeping my original WordPress site, which is exactly where I finally found a real community. Anyway, thank you so much for sharing this, and please know you are definitely not alone in how you feel. I truly hope you find the joy in writing once more, and I wish you the absolute best success moving forward.