I recently to decided to call it quits on one of my favorite hobbies and activities…blogging regularly about being more productive on the Linux desktop. It was a long, hard decision to make, but I really think that it was the right thing to do. Here are just a few reasons that I decided to hang it up:

It was taking up a lot of mental RAM that I wanted to use elsewhere. When you run a semi-professional blog, there’s always a certain pressure to post at least semi-frequently and to stay on top of the news in your field. As it turned out, keeping tabs on all the great software releases for Linux and the latest developments on the desktop was taking up a lot of my mental cycles…mental cycles I ultimately decided I’d rather be using thinking about some things that just more important to me right now…like my Master’s thesis. I was thinking about my blog way more than I really wanted to.

The amount of time I was spending on the project was time I really needed to be spending doing other things. Don’t get me wrong…I love writing about Linux and connecting with the community through blogging, and I derived an immense sense of satisfaction from it. But RSS feeds, post planning and writing, and site maintenance were taking up time that I ultimately concluded would be better spent on activities more vital to the spiritual, emotional, and physical health of myself and my family. On a good week, my blog took up about four hours of time…that’s now been translated into about 3 hours of exercise per week with my wife, and an extra hour of reading material that pertains to my career field.

That kind of actvity just didn’t fit in with my life plan or lifestyle anymore. At one point, I was looking at working in technology/web business as part of my career plan. That has since changed. My life circumstances are different now…when I started blogging, I was working part-time at a pizza place and finishing up my under-graduate courses. Now, I’m entrenched in very time-consuming graduate work, working in my chosen career field, and planning for a baby. As much as I enjoyed what I was doing while it lasted, I’m now just as happy to being using that time to better prepare myself for my job, or work on the nursery with my wife.

All this isn’t to say I’ve given up my hobby completely…I’ve just removed all pressure from myself for it to be anything but a hobby. It’s now something I do as I have time, when I feel like, no pressure at all. To that end I placed my branded Linux blog on indefinite hiatus (who knows, maybe I’ll be able and willing to take it back up in a year or two) and moved all of my blogging activities (Linux and otherwise) to my personal blog.

Have you ever had to cut something substantial and important to you from your regular activities? How did you decided to call it quits? Share in the forums.

Photo Credit: cosmonautirussi