In social media, trending are topics attracting the attention of most of the people, thus popular. Unfortunately, trending topics are self-feeding, an accident along the highway where everyone wants to slow down and take a look. Then they want to tell others about it so they can look.
Walking by a student glued to their computer, I asked, "What are you looking at?"
Without lifting her eyes away, she replied, "What everyone else is looking at."
That's a good definition of trending.
You might think that today's blog exercise is to find a trending topic and blog about it. You could, but the exercise today is to look at your own trends.
In a lovely response to my blog exercise on naming your favorite things, the author of Tony's Texts wrote about his favorite things. In response to my appreciation for his essay, he responded with "it made a nice change from the darker posts I've been writing."
Tony, who calls himself "Honest Puck," noticed that his site was trending towards the darker side of the force. He admitted he was attracted to that blog exercise as a safety rope, grabbing on to move towards the lighter ways of the world, more fun, silliness, laughter, and joy.
As I work on the ebook of these Blog Exercises, I can spot my own moods even though I worked hard to keep "me" out of the equation. You never really can, but I tried. Still, I could see the ebbs and flows of life events shadowed in my choices, my own emotional trends.
Your blog exercise is to check your site for your own trends.
Are your emotions telling on your site? If you want them to be obvious, that's fine. If you don't, can you still tell what mood you were in when you wrote that post?
Sometimes we publish posts filled with happiness, a bit of joy in the world, yet in our hearts we are grieving, fearful, or experiencing an emotion counter to the desired expression we need to convey. This conflict might be invisible, or might be shouting to the world that you are in two minds about the emotional context of the post.
Sometimes we run along a track of the same crap mood every day, day after day, and it shows, in our work, and our blogging. For a short while, most people accept such emotional drifts, but after a while, even the best get boring.
Check your site's trending moods recently and in the past. Consider editing some posts to mix up your moods, or notice when they are trending a little faster to adjust so you aren't playing the same note over and over again.
You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is an ongoing challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles. You may join us at any time, but I recommend you take a moment to visit past blog exercises to help invigorate your site.
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