NY Times concurs: Blogging can affect your health adversely

While I took the weekend to sleep more to recover from this insomnia spell I've been suffering from, Comrade GoGo forwarded me a story from the NY Times that made me feel not so alone in my concern over my health and blogging as a profession, "In the Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Til They Drop."

The NY Times article points mainly to two prominate Tech bloggers who recently died of heart issues, and a third Om Malik of the popular tech blog network Giga Omni Media who had a heart attack during the holidays at the age of 41. Micheal Arrington of the currently #1 Technorati rated TechCrunch blog "has gained 30 pounds in the last three years and developed a severe sleeping disorder." He also adds, "At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen. This is not sustainable."

Arrington and Om not only blog but they are the owners of their own blog networks, so on top of the stress of writing, they have the stress of running a business with employees to pay. That's a whole lot of stress my friends. I had my own dreams of creating a blog network but after this horrid insomnia, I have revisited that dream because I want to have life/work balance. It's one of the prime reasons I left corpse-rate America and moved to the web, so I could have freedom and more balance, and yet, I find myself back with the shackles but from a different master, web traffic.

In order to make the big money or even a decent living at professional blogging, you have to constantly be posting, be on top of current news & trends, and yeah, did I mention that you have to constantly be posting. Seriously, it does feel like you're on a treadmill set on one fast speed, and you can't get off. You either keep running or you fall down and hit the belt. Eventually, you will crash purely out of fatigue.

And not only do you have to keep posting, you have to constantly be creative and figuring out what is popular in your niche so that people keep coming back to your blog(s). This is why sometimes, I have a glass of wine at the cafe over a coffee (as you see in the picture above) so I can take the edge off a bit.

On a healthier note, here are some other things I've done to take the stress out of blogging...

One of the main reasons I switched to doing more original content versus news reporting was because it was too much stress to constantly be on top of all the news and get a story out before the news got old in minutes. Isn't that hilarious yet insane that a story can get old in less than an hour on the web? So given this situation, can you see how chasing the breaking news can be heart stressing and weight gaining living? That's all kinds of Cortisol induced belly-fat creation going on.

One of the tricks I use to maximize daily traffic around the world is that my posts for the day go live between midnight-1am PST (California). This way I get around 4-5pm-ish the day before in Japan and Sydney Australia to 8am in London, and then bright and early for all the big media sites in New York and the eastern US coast. I found that when I blogged at 7am PST my traffic for the day wasn't as big as if I posted around midnight PST. I LOVE that TypePad allows postdating, one of the greatest stress relievers to a blogger.

My sleep has gotten so much better since I did that Internet detox. The stress relief  isn't so much from just taking a break, but a serious revisitation of what I want to do with my life and my blogs, and how I can create a living on the web, yet have balance in life. As much as the Internet and blogging is lovable, it is not worth sacrificing your health, and I learned that my spell with insomnia was merely my body's way of telling me that I was doing exactly that, letting go of my health. So ok, we're getting back on track.

Anyone else who blogs professionally or works on the web notice any ill affects on your health as a result of your high web use? If you did, and got back on track, what things did you do to restore your health & vitality?