Blogging can be a crazy roller coaster of emotions. You can go from exhilarating highs to lonely lows in no time flat. One minute you have a killer post that is literally making your server "buzz" thanks to Digg and StumbleUpon. The next minute you swear that the Internet must be broken because no one is commenting on your latest masterpiece-O-S. In order to make it through these ups and downs, it is important to keep a level head. Don't get too cocky when things are going well. When things are looking bad, keep your chin up. As long as you are staying true to yourself (and your blog), and continue writing the best that you can, things will turn around sooner than you expect.

This happens to all of us. The excitement that you feel when you write something that causes a reaction is the reason why we blog. Publishing a post that gets a response from people like Shoemoney or Graham Langdon causes an addicting rush that pushes us on. How many of you have compulsively refreshed your stats to watch the number of StumbleUpon referrals climb through the roof? I know I sure have. Its more addicting than crack! But the flip side is also true. It can be so depressing when something we really work hard on does not get the reaction we hoped for. Sometimes it can create a downward spiral of negative thoughts that even makes you contemplate throwing in the towel. The important thing is to see through these emotions and stick with it. If you've got a good plan for your blog, keep following it. It will pay off in the end.

I have seen these ups and downs myself very recently. I had a couple of recent posts that got an amazing response. I was pumped. Around the same time I noticed that "contest fever" had struck the blogosphere. I thought to myself, "what better way to help out my fellow bloggers than to help them run their contests?". So I put together the BuzzMyBlog Random Contest Winner Picker to take all the hard work out of tallying up the number of entries and picking a winner. I thought it would be a smashing success. Boy was I wrong. It barely got noticed at all. Not only that, but my stats were way down for the week as well. I was seriously down in the dumps.

Did I let that get to me? Of course not! That is part of the game we call blogging! I have a plan for my blog. I have lots of exciting things yet to come. I am going to keep working and I am confident things will turn back around. I was going to write more about having a plan for your blog and sticking to it, but Ben Barden summed it up perfectly in his latest blog post. Check it out to learn how to keep your blog on track. Instead, I'll leave you with a few words of encouragement. There will be good times and bad. It happens to us all. Don't let the bad times get you down. Keep your chin held high and push on. Things will always get better.

Jeff