Have you ever said you would like to be a problogger? You know, quit that job for “the man”, blog for a living, only have yourself to answer to and watch the dollars roll in?

I have.

It sounds like a great job. You can pick your own hours. In fact, with a laptop and Wifi you can blog from almost anywhere in the world. You could even blog in your pajamas. Sweet!

I’m sure many of you know who Lorelle VanFossen is. She’s a problogger. She authors three blogs including “Lorelle on WordPress”, writes for other blogs, is on the Woopra team, teaches/speaks at WordPress WordCamp conferences, authored the book“Blogging Tips -What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging”, plus works with schools, businesses and non-profits as a consultant and teacher. She also travels a lot. Within a short period of time she was in Dallas, Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Portland Oregon, and Hawaii.

Sounds glamorous, doesn’t it?

Today’s Lesson

The other day I visited Lorelles’ blog and read her post titled “Blog Struggles: I Just Need Two Seconds Of Your Time”.

In this post she describes a typical day in her life. In the second paragraph she says,

My day begins at five in the morning. I used to make time for exercise but more and more my work life creeps into those precious hours of the morning as email, Twitter, Facebook, and all my blog responsibilities demand more and more of my time.

She then goes on to say,

Even as I write this, the guilt of 150 emails still waiting in my inbox, 16 comments that still need an answer, and 6 messages on my voice mail nags me – not to mention the thirty-plus posts I have to publish every week that are slowly getting more and more behind as I feel like I’m chasing my tail.

When we think of blogging professionally it’s often common to only look at the good part. You know, the travels, the notoriety and the money. We don’t look and sometimes don’t know, or see, what goes on behind the scenes. We don’t realize just like other self employed people, the problogger job stays with them 24/7. We don’t see the demands on their time. Nor do we realize how accountable they must be to their audience. Much is expected of a problogger, and even though the fame, fortune and travels look glamorous, when we calculate their hourly wage, they may be making much less than if they worked for “the man”.

After reading Lorelle’s words, I began to wonder. If a person is a problogger, can there be a happy medium? Can you “have it all” and not have to sacrifice the important things in life? And if you do, can you really reach your full potential as a problogger?

Today’s Assignment

Would you like to be a problogger?

Have you thought of the responsibilities it entails?

Can you think of ways a problogger could find balance between work and their life?

Since I’m rethinking if I really want to go the problogger route, your answers are important to me. Please feel free to share.

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P.S. When I interviewed Lorelle in July (2008) she shared tons of knowledge. The interview resulted in a nine part series which is recapped in the following post; Interview With Lorelle VanFossen, A Recap Plus A Bonus. Each part is well worth reading.

Photo Credit: Scott Ableman