On Hitting “Publish”: Everything That Goes Through My Brain Before Publishing a Blog Post

Why yes, my workspace DOES always look like it’s straight out of an ethereal Instagram account (only thing missing is my straw hat) and DEFINITELY NOT a scratched IKEA desk with red wine stains on it. *cough* (Photo by Lauren Mancke on Unsplash, AKA not by me and not really my workspace. More on this photo below)

Everything that goes through my brain before publishing a blog post:

-Yikes, I just spent four hours writing this blog post that might be an utter flop.

-Is this even worthy enough to post? I mean… years ago I would post almost every day, even if it was only a few sentences. Why don’t I post like that anymore? Why must everything be at least 1,000 words? Am I a better writer now that I write more, or was I better writer then when I was more succinct?

-Why is my Yoast SEO analyser telling me that there are so many things wrong with this blog post? Why must it mock me with that little red light? What must I do to appease the Yoast gods and make the light green?

-Wow, I really don’t know anything about SEO.

-Wow, I sure do write a lot of posts that will never, ever rank in Google. I should probably write more of those. Why don’t I write more of them? Oh yeah. ‘Cause I find them super boring.

-Should I add an affiliate link in here somehow? Nah… it doesn’t really fit the post. This is precisely why I make just about no money from this site and am constantly worried about money (Step one: probably avoid living in one of the most expensive cities on earth. Step two: probably avoid eating lunch from Pret every single day). Oh hell. I’ll put in an affiliate link anyway and maybe I’ll make enough money from it to buy an extra coffee next month if someone happens to buy like, a package of elastic bands or edible paint or something that I definitely did not recommend but someone in Missouri fell down some weird Amazon rabbit hole and bought heart-shaped balloons through the link I provided (this is honestly what happens with Amazon affiliate links). *token affiliate link to book I’m really excited to read*

-Should I put advertising on my site? A bunch of my other blogger friends are doing it and making mad money. Do people still say “mad”? I don’t know. I should get off the Internet more and spend time in the real world, and then I would know if people still say “mad”. Anyway, would I have more time in the real world if I was making more mad money, AKA that sweet advertising money? But wait… doesn’t that mean I’ll have ads every other paragraph, and don’t I think that looks really, really ugly? And isn’t it claimed that the ads are catered for the reader, and yet every single blog shows me ads for luxury SUVs? *spoiler – I’m not buying a luxury SUV*

-These photos really don’t match what I’m trying to say. Why don’t I have more “stock photos” of my own? How many times can I put a beach photo in the post and just call it a day? Should I start using pretty photos from online? How are those photos free to use? They’re so pretty!

See? Pretty! Or maybe I’m just distracted by the undeniably irresistible pull of succulents, sunshine, and bourbon (I see you Jim Beam) (Photo by Farrel Nobel on Unsplash)

-This wine is OK but not as good as that other wine I had last week. If I made money from this blog maybe I could afford to always drink the other wine. Or maybe I should just keep drinking shit wine so that I don’t have to have ads. That’s kinda romantic, right? Like… isn’t there something Hemingway-esque about drinking cheap red wine while writing?

-Hemingway was kind of a dick, though. Didn’t he have four wives with very little time between them, if at all? And didn’t he straight-up ghost one of them to marry another one? Very suspicious marital timeline, Ernie. Maybe I shouldn’t try to emulate Hemingway, although I bet his third wife Martha Gellhorn (travel writer and war correspondent extraordinaire) would have a few stories to tell over some bottles of red.

-I wonder what someone like Martha Gellhorn would think of travel blogging?

Accurate depiction of wine consumption this year (photo by Elisha Terada on Unsplash)

-Um… where was I? Oh right, I was hoping to publish this blog post before midnight and it is now 12:23am. Is it bad if I change the time of this post and publish it in the past?

-Do I have to promote this blog post on Instagram, too? Why do a bunch of people have that “slide up to view” thing on Instagram and I don’t? Does anyone actually click links from Instagram profiles?

-In my procrastination Googling (it’s a thing) I just found out why I don’t have that “slide up to view” thing on Instagram… I don’t have a business account. I used to have one then went back to a personal account because I thought having a business account was perhaps the reason my Instagram was doing so poorly/growing so slowly (hint: the personal account is doing no better). Should I get a business account again? Also, do I still have some of that truffle cheese left in the fridge?

-I wonder how much time I spend Googling things instead of just publishing blog posts?

-Did I read through this enough times? I know that inevitably I will re-read this post months from now and spot a typo in it, despite editing it four times. How can I get better at editing? There’s no way I would ever hire an editor for this blog because every single professional editor would tell me I have way too many side-notes and rants and rambles and strung-on sentences and that I start most of my sentences with conjunctions and end most of them with prepositions and I still need spellcheck to make sure I’ve spelled “receive” correctly.

-Are you sure it’s “recEIve”, spellcheck? That looks wrong. Why can’t I just remember this word?!

-I really shouldn’t have been so proud of myself for spelling “phosphorescence” correctly on the first try in that blog post. This is probably why I can never spell “receive”… I’m too goddamn smug and karma is catching up with me, one word at a time.

-I don’t know why but thinking of spelling just made me think of elementary school which made me think of the time my principal asked if anyone had any questions at the end of an assembly and I raised my hand and stood up in front of the WHOLE SCHOOL and asked what linoleum is. My principal laughed and asked me why I would ask that and I said, “Because my mum is always making fun of my dad for saying it incorrectly,” and OH MY GOD, seriously, why would I ask that? And how precocious of a kid was I? Shading my dad in front of the whole school when he was at work not able to defend himself or prove that he could, in fact, pronounce “linoleum”. Sweet Jesus.

I typed in “blogging” in an Unsplash search and this photo came up. This photographer gets it. (Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash)

-OK, back to editing. But first, I need to look through my emails to find all the times people have written to me saying that I should hire them to edit my blog. To be honest whenever someone writes me that I’m like, “Excccccuuuuuuuuuse me? Why do you think my blog needs editing?!” even though I just found another post where I spelled “receive” incorrectly. My favourite email pitch is when someone wrote to me saying she’d edit all of my blog posts for free and managed to spell at least five words wrong in her pitch, including my name. Half an hour later she wrote to me again saying, and I quote, “LOL I sent that before editing. NVM the spelling mistakes, Breanna.” Seriously… what?!

-Whoops, there goes half an hour. I just need to research this one tiny thing for the article and then I’ll be able to post this blog post.

-HO. LY. SHIT. In more procrastination Googling (it seriously is a thing) I found out that I have EXPLODING HEAD SYNDROME (this is also seriously a thing). I have been dealing with it my entire life but I just thought it was like when your body jerks you awake when you’re trying to fall asleep. NOPE. Turns out I have been suffering from auditory hallucinations my whole life. I repeat: I HAVE EXPLODING HEAD SYNDROME. Should I be worried? Or should I be weirdly proud that I have something called exploding head syndrome?! I feel like I probably shouldn’t put that on my Tinder profile.

-Should I get Tinder again? Wait. That didn’t go so well last time. Maybe I should stop talking about my auditory hallucinations on first dates.

-DAMN IT I was just about to hit publish and I realised I haven’t created a “Pinnable” image for Pinterest. Is anyone even going to pin this anyway? This is just some weird post that will never rank in Google and doesn’t even have the proper images in it.

-Yeah, OK, fine, I’ll get a business account on Instagram again.

-Oooh, new season of Narcos?! Some trivia about me just in case there was ever a situation where someone was forced to name my top five dreamboats (let’s not dwell on the fact that I am conceited enough to think that this would be an actual, real-life game show scenario): Agent Peña (AKA Pedro Pascal) is on that list. Good golly is he on that list. I had ZERO feelings for the blonde agent (I forget his name, that’s how little I care) and once I saw the actress who played the blonde agent’s wife in a little dive bar in North London and I smiled at her and she honestly looked so angry at me that the Cypriot guy I was on an accidental date with (this, too, is a thing) actually said, “Yikes. What did you do to her?” Good thing I NEVER LIKED HER CHARACTER and didn’t care that she was basically written out of the second season so that there was more time to focus on dreamy Agent Peña. In case you need to win that fictional game show, other dreamboats include Garrett Hedlund (specifically when dressed in 70s clothing… actually, I might just like 70s clothing because I just developed a crush on virtually everyone in that photoshoot), Matthias Schoenaerts (specifically when playing Mr. Oak in a movie… yes, I watch weird fan fiction montage videos, don’t judge), Trevor Noah (specifically when ALL THE TIME), Chris Evans (those photos/videos with his dog on Twitter are getting me), and Jake Gyllenhaal (any way, any how, any damn day of the year). Honourable mentions go to James Marsden, John Cho, O’Shea Jackson, Jr., and Dwayne “The Rock”, Johnson. And those are just the living ones.

-Oh fuck, it’s 3:21am. I am definitely not publishing this blog post tonight. Whatever, I’ll just publish it on Wednesday instead.

<remember to insert Pinnable image here before publishing, you dimwit>

What thoughts go through your head before publishing a blog post?