I’m sitting here on a warm autumn Saturday evening in New Zealand, sipping a glass of local red wine, thinking about time zones and how they affect bloggers in the southern hemisphere. For those of you writing blogs in northern hemisphere, time zones may not seem much of an issue. For those of us blogging here down under, we are at a serious disadvantage.
You see, while the rest of the world sleeps we’re wide awake, enjoying our day, writing and going about whatever daily chores we choose. Work posted at this time is far from productive. The Word Press Stats page tells me the northern time is currently 4:50 am, while here I am enjoying Saturday evening around 5:40 pm.
You may not think this difference is a problem, but it does affect the number of views received on a page. When I tweet my efforts on Twitter during my waking hours, views are limited to those in this part of the world, effectively cutting out more than half the world’s population. Consequently I’ve taken to sneaking in the occasional tweet when I wake around 2 a.m. This makes a noticeable difference in attracting new readers to my pages here and elsewhere, but plays havoc with my sleep patterns. Pages published on Word Press during my day are way down the list of newly submitted work by the time most readers wake to the world.
My most productive writing happens in the morning, when my brain cells are fresh and ideas hover in the air like blooms waiting to be picked. In the evening my creativity has long since closed doors for the day and signed off duty.
However, today is Saturday, a warm autumn Saturday evening here in New Zealand. I’ve finished my usual weekend domestic chores and mowed the lawn as well. I’ve sat reading a book and fallen asleep while doing so. Life has been uncomplicated. I poured a glass of wine as my reward for surviving another day and decided to see which blogs I follow had new postings. Nothing! Everyone is still asleep it seems.
The only solution I can think of is to start writing. After this initial free writing here to warm up my brain, I know many more words will follow. The night is young.
I ask all you northern hemisphere bloggers to be aware of your southern blogging colleagues and watch out for posts that are submitted at what may seem strange hours for you.
Writing Your Stories 
We’re awake.. but I think you’re sleeping now…well, see ya when you wake up. Pawkiss 🙂
lol I can understand how it must be Val….but in a way its the same all over… I might post an article here in the UK and wait for any comments I might get, however most of my readers are in the States and they are 7 hours behind me so come midday and sometime after that I am often heard to say ” I see America is awake” as the comments to come in…as I often start on the internet early in MY morning I can sometimes connect with the Antipodes just as you lot are going to bed…I guess there is not much we can do with it unless the boffin’s can come up with a way where we can all meet in the upper Atmospheric Exosphere. As I have just woken Sleep tight Val.
After a crazy few weeks with out-of-town company and lots of work deadlines, I’m just now catching up on my blog reading. So in this case, it doesn’t matter that you’re asleep as I’m writing–I loved this post, and thanks for sharing it!