Some people looking to turn their hobbies into cash generators have been picking up freelance writing assignments for pieces published online, and so far I haven't heard of this type of arrangement driving anyone to suffer a fatal heart attack. The lifestyle of some bloggers, on the other hand, has been described by some as invoking unsustainable levels of stress. And those job-related stresses that lead many professional bloggers to sleepless nights and around-the-clock work hours were likely factors in the recent deaths of two prominent bloggers, and the heart attack of another.
The New York Times ran a concerned piece on the health of bloggers, and dramatically described blogging as "the digital-era sweatshop." The article's author isn't sure how many people are paid to blog, but estimates that the number is at least in the thousands. Any bloggers out there that can describe work-life balance? How about any nonbloggers that can relate to the job stresses described by the NYT?
DAY Birger et Mikkelsen
Aww all the bloggers hiding and don't want to talk about it.
I actually tried to find pictures of those guys. I was only able to find good pictures of two. One of them I would say was health and shouldn't have passed, the other? I'll let you judge for yourself. hamburglers are no good for the heart.
1Hmmm, I'm not sure that two or three incidents immediately raises cause for concern. And, sad and still young as they were, it's not by any means unusual for people to have heart attacks in their 40s, 50s and 60s.
I blog to promote my business, and while I'm interested in adding more paid blogging to my freelance writing portfolio, I don't think I really fit the picture of the professional blogger. I do know that a lot of paid blogging opportunities pay dirt cheap, and if you want to earn a living that way, you may be forced into they all-night routine by that more than by the 24 hour news cycle.
2Now, this is a question also for bloggers who work for Sugar Network...is it true? Do you really feel the stress and the burn-out of your jobs?
3while i can see how some of those aspects of the blogging "job" could be true and seem extraordinary, it's really a choice, or set of choices, that each person makes. like you said, it's about a work-life balance, and ultimately, that balance is determined by the person on the scale. most of my income now comes from paid blogging gigs, and i can choose to blog 20 hours a day 7 days a week, or get 8 hours of sleep every night and keep my weekends for myself. there are phases in which i gun it for three weeks as in the former, and there are times when i take the latter approach. it really is no different (as in, not any more so) from the high stress, high pressure, deadline driven career i had before i quit and started blogging.
i am sure there are (unfortunately) many people out there who suffer heart attacks, high blood pressure, etc from work related stress in different, non-blogging, jobs, but we just don't hear about them. in the case of paid bloggers, the proportion is what makes the statistic seem so significant.
now the case about food bloggers gaining a little weight as the result of their "job"....that is an absolute causation!
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