On Perspective & An Announcement
When you’ve been blogging as long as I have, it’s really easy to get caught up in comparison, competition and the popularity game. Add social media to the mix and it’s incredibly easy to go down the ugly path of insecurity and playing the numbers game.
Why am I not getting more readers? Why don’t I have sponsor opportunities? Why aren’t more people sharing my posts?
When I stopped using my pen name and had my coming out, in a sense, a few years ago, it was hard for me to balance everything. I was throwing myself into this new world of freelancing, where my name became the most important asset I had. I worked hard to gain credibility when it came to my business but my writing fell through the cracks. I was pouring my creative energy in to my clients’ websites, their campaigns and all of my writing became almost formulaic. I decided to divide up my blogging with a personal site and a business site, which was a good idea. I just didn’t execute it properly and spread myself too thin. Whenever I found the time to write on my personal blog, it was just me opening up a vein and just dumping all of the feelings I was trying to process in my life. For the turmoil-filled time in my life, it made sense.
Somewhere along the way, I lost perspective and my voice because I was too concerned about perception. I didn’t want to mix business with personal, even though my personal passion is what fuels my business.
The World Is My Jester.
I also forgot about the things that make me happy. The parts of my life that I don’t write about as much even though it’s all a part of me. At the end of the day, I’m not just a 20-something blogger. I’m a journalist, a photographer, a writer, a fan girl, a geek, and so much more. When I wrote an impromptu post about GetGlue’s decision to get rid of their physical stickers, I felt…whole. I’m not saying that my personal blog will be a hub of pop culture updates and news, but I want to write more about the things that matter to me. I don’t want to go to other sites just to write about things that I love.
I lost sight of what has kept me writing and blogging for a decade. It’s about my perception of the world. The reason that we write isn’t always to bring something new to the table, but to share with the world from our vantage point. As individuals, we can all experience the same exact event but come away with a completely different story to share. We each bring our past experiences, our emotions and our powers of perception to the table. Those of us who choose to share our experiences, especially on a personal level, shouldn’t be afraid of our voice.
How much is too much?
I often get asked why I share such personal experiences on my blog. I actually internalize a lot of my feelings as I am going through them. I have to process them on my own, sometimes by talking things out with close friends or writing in my journal. Yes, I do write about some intensely personal topics, like my recent post about the truth behind A Distorted Dream.
The fact is, I write about the uncomfortable so the people who may stumble upon my words today or months from now can have that reminder when they need it – you’re not alone. There’s someone else who gets it. You will be OK.
I am in this for the long haul. I had a lot of time to reflect this week. It’s easy to get bogged down in comparison. I had to remind myself that my big passion isn’t sexy. It’s not pop culture. It’s something that will take nurturing and I’m in it for the long haul. So I took a deep breath, put things in perspective and got back on track.
The announcement? I am working on some big projects for 2014. I also want to keep in touch with you guys not just through this blog or social media, but via a newsletter. It will be simple. It will be bi-weekly, or even monthly, and I really hope that you will sign up for it. I know how easy it is for our mailboxes to get filled up with too many updates and newsletters, so I promise to make this as valuable for you as possible.
Just enter your email below and the first update(with the announcements for 2014) will be at the end of this month.