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Creative Opera is one year old (launched February 15th 2009). In that time, my readership has grown, my RSS subscriptions have multiplied and my Twitter following has risen steadily. But, Creative Opera is still very much one of the smaller, lesser-known design blogs. Compared to Smashing Magazine or Six Revisions, it is clear that I really am a very small fish in an extremely large pond. The funny thing is, I’m okay with that. Creative Opera was never meant to take the design world by storm. It was set up to help new and upcoming designers with career advice and helpful resources. I thought my personal experiences as a designer and a design instructor could really help some people, and hopefully it has.

After one year, I’m not the slightest bit tired of blogging. I’ve heard that after three months, it tends to get stale and the ideas start to run dry, but that hasn’t been the case for me. I’m eager to write posts, and my little notebook of blog ideas contains at least six months worth of post ideas that I haven’t yet used. I love everything about it, almost to the point of addiction. I look forward to the end of my work day, when I get to sit down and start working on blog posts.

The problem is, this blog is EXTREMELY time consuming. There is so much more that goes into blogging than most people realize. I laugh to myself every time I read a blog post talking about “lazy” design bloggers that create round-ups of 50 blue websites or 50 logos featuring animals. I don’t know about those other bloggers, but round-up posts take me three times longer to create than my standard advice post. Sometimes I spend months bookmarking sites to fill up a round-up post. But, readers seem to like them, so I put in the hours and try to keep the subjects of my round-ups useful.

Even a regular text-only post takes around three hours to write, proof, and post. Add a couple of hours searching for stock photos that work with the content, add an hour of time submitting links throughout the internet to promote the post, and you’re looking at six hours for the easiest, shortest post you’ll ever see published on Creative Opera, and that’s not counting research time.

Of course, it’s not just all about posting content. I spend time reading and replying to comments, and reading and replying to emails. Let me be clear, it is your comments and your emails that keep me blogging. I can’t tell you what a difference it makes after staying up until 3am to create a new post to get an email thanking me for helping with a problem, or a comment about how much the post was enjoyed. I love the interaction. I love the discussion. L-O-V-E it. But, it does take hours from my days. Every day.

I’ve found myself with a conundrum. I love blogging, I truly enjoy interacting with my readers, and I really love the fact that I am able to give back to the design community and help new designers. But, I seem to have lost everything else in my life somewhere along the way. A typical day for me consists of working an 8-10 hour day for my clients, eating dinner, and then sitting back down in my office to blog until sometimes midnight, sometimes 3am. And, for all of that work, and all of that time, I’m still only able to post 2-3 times a week, and gather enough traffic to be turned down by BuySell Ads (and deservedly so).

So, I’ve come to a hard decision. I need to re-prioritize. I want to spend more time with my husband and family, get out and go running with my friends again, and get back to horseback riding and taking my dogs for walks. My company website has been begging for a redesign for years, and my poor guitar has been gathering dust for a month. Who knows, maybe I could even pull out my old sketchbook and have a relaxing draw every now and again.

I have to give it up to guys like Jacob Gube and Chris Coyier. I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know how they blog consistently amazing content, manage to work as full-time freelances, AND write books and speak at conferences. Perhaps they’re secretly robots who don’t need to sleep at night? I am in awe of them, and will continue to enjoy their, and the many other, blogs out there that I love so much.

Does this mean that I’m quitting the blogging game entirely? Does this mean I’m selling Creative Opera? No, not at all. I love it too much. I will continue to post to this blog, but only as I have time, and as I have ideas. And, when I do post, I won’t worry about promoting my articles or watching my stats. I’ll continue to answer emails and respond to comments, but in a leisurely fashion. I’m just coming to terms with the fact that Creative Opera will probably never be popular enough to make enough money to make it a viable resource of income. It’s always just going to be something I do because I love it and want to help other designers. So, it’s just going to move down a bit on my priority list.

I hope that you’ll leave me in your RSS reader and continue to pop in from time to time to see if there is anything new on Creative Opera, and I hope you’ll forgive me for (in a way) giving in. I’ll still be on Twitter every day, I’ll continue to add to my Tumblr posts, and I’ve been thinking of doing more guest posts on bigger blogs. And, who knows, if I miss it enough, or find a way to sleep less hours each night, I may even pick it up again full-force. But, for a while, I need to revisit my life away from the computer.

Thank you all for being Creative Opera readers and for all of your lovely emails and comments. It’s been a great year!!

Manda