In the book I published this month, I emphasized the importance of regular blog updates.

And then… I took an unexpected hiatus. Blame a combination of health problems and trouble at work. I don’t want to get into the details, but when I was feeling down it was way easier to look at anime as a solace than as source material.

However, taking time off really turned a lot of what I’ve always believed about the necessity of regular updates on its head. Here is how it went for me.

Traffic levels out

I assumed that when I stopped blogging for the better part of a month, I could expect my daily visits to plummet to zero. I checked every couple of days, but that never happened.

Instead, traffic has simply leveled out. Gone are the MWF traffic spikes I grew to expect following regular updates on those same days. I’ve been pretty vocal about not updating, so regular readers aren’t checking. What remains is search traffic for terms like “my little monster,” “romantic anime,” and “anime is dead,” to name three of the top 10 this month. As long as I have a relevant archive, that traffic will never die.

The ideas come back after you stop worrying

At first, I felt extremely guilty about not blogging. My schedule hadn’t exactly been accurate when I was writing Build Your Anime Blog, but now it was nonexistent. I panicked and tried to think of things I could write, but that just made me more resistant to the idea of writing at all.

Finally, after days of finding anything and everything to procrastinate on blog writing, I decided to end the madness. I blog for fun, and if blogging wasn’t fun anymore, I just would stop. I spent some time doing other stuff… and found myself continuously jotting down ideas for future blog posts. When I stopped treating blogging like a job and more like a hobby again, I knew I was ready to go back. Now instead of feeling reluctant about writing, I’m excited to share all the ideas I’ve thought of while I’ve been away.

But really, nothing happens

So I broke my updating streak. So I lost some regular readers. The world didn’t end. My blog is still here where I left it.

This is really good news for bloggers, I think. If you need that hiatus, take it. A few weeks off doesn’t spell the end of everything.

My experience taught me that the biggest enemy to a productive blog was my own feeling of inadequacy and guilt. Nothing else held me back so much. So let me make that mistake for you. In an age of distraction, falling off course sometimes is inevitable. It just means that any time you decide to post in spite of everything is itself a success.