Loss of Interest

[Xarex]

Never thought I'd ever lose interest in my own website, but for the past 2 weeks.. I just haven't even bothered. For about 6-7 months, I was so focused on it. I loved it. I had built it up, tried a few different styles and CMS, before coming across PHP Melody, got it popular, gone through my troubles, recovered from those troubles. Learned quite a bit, came up with new ideas, wrote so much for my blogs, etc.

And lately, I've just lost interest. I have visited my site at least once or twice in the past 2 weeks. I'm not sure what it is.. but I just had to back off lately.

Hopefully I'll get some interest again to keep it going. If anything, at least I hold the domain name.

Life has just crept up and I've gotten more involved in doing things in the real world.. and just spending less time on the Internet. Probably because I'm at work all day on a computer programming. I come home.. and there's my laptop. I can be on it for a few minutes. If I'm doing anything on it now, it's usually writing.. philosophy, stories, etc.

My interest in websites has not waned.. just been dulled lately.

Anyone else go through this?

[Hills101]

I'm at stage one at the moment, I love my website and cannot wait to update it life permitting. When I first started my site I must admit, your site was one of a few that I drew inspiration from Xarex. It would be such a shame if you let it go altogether. In the past I have got bored with websites and forums, they ended up being a bind and a chore to update and maintain. This site seems to be different, adding regular content is not hard using PhpMelody and I look forward to new versions and features.

Good luck with what ever you decide anyway. It would be a real shame to let the site, rank and daily hits you have built up go to waste!!

[Trace]

I tend to lose interest in things quite fast if nothing new shows up.
Routine is something that doesnt work with me.

If I had to place new videos on my site every day and maintain it without anything interesting happening I'd probably get bored as well.

What keeps me going is feedback from users who love the site, increasing visitor numbers, interested companies in advertising, and even angry emails from film producers who feel that I'm doing something wrong

And I still have a lot of ideas for my site to work on to improve it even more.

[Andrew]

That's a shame since you're clearly skilled at web development Xarex.
On the flip side it's great to know you are pursuing similarly engaging and creative work.

I can relate to your story. The 5000+ posts on this board and the 15,000+ support emails alone, meant I had to give up a lot of time in the "real world". Time is certainly precious to all of us.

This may sound like a cliché, but it's worth pursuing what you're truly passionate about in the long term.

[Xarex]

Thanks Hills. I'm very happy that there was inspiration you got from my site. That's what it was intended for! Inspiration!

It will help me again to recover knowing that the site can do that for people.

I will get back into it eventually. I am certainly not giving it up. I'm about to purchase the domain for 9 years. And the web hosting is cheap enough. So much potential with that domain.

Real world. Programming. Trying to write a book. Some minor investments in the stock market. Paying down student loans. A new woman in my life.

By the time I sit down and get to my site.. I'm just not focused as much as I want to be.

The good thing about websites is that you always have more opportunity with them.

I've seen websites go inactive for months at a time, and then all of a sudden, changes start happening and they become popular again. Might have to work at getting it popular again, but a source of my traffic is Google and these forums themselves. So if it can continue to inspire, that's great.

I don't plan on being inactive for months. Just a few weeks. I will eventually get back into it with more ideas to keep it going and keep it creative. I get blocks of passion for doing things... and at the moment, it is writing philosophy. When I had my passion for blogging, I blogged for nearly 3 months straight, every day a new post. Normally people try to think about what they can write on a blog, but everything was just coming to me everyday and every week.

Never means that I've lost the passion for it.. just have a passion for doing something else right now while my mind is filled with ideas for it.

Occasionally I'll read and attempt to learn about languages such as PHP, Ruby on Rails, C++ (my boss has me doing his daughter's homework ... she's taking a C++ class and I know nothing about C++ ... good learning practice), etc. And I'm learning how to use a program called MonoDevelop which is an application to help create programs for cross platform interface.

Always doing something!