blog
A regular record of your thoughts, opinions or experiences that you put on the internet for other people to read.
Last week saw the arrival of the first day of autumn, which is all kinds of awesome as I just LOVE autumn, and I thought ‘great, I can finally write my ‘I ♥ Autumn’ post!’
So, I got to thinking about the writing the post and then the inevitable happened… I started to overthink everything.
- Do I have a good enough stock photo or do I need to take my own?
- I really should take my own shouldn’t I?
- Do the shops have mini pumpkins yet?!
- Do I have an autumn looking candle I could use?
- I could make a pretty hot chocolate… But then I need to get some squirty cream…
…and so on. I find myself doing this so much. I have so, so many ideas for posts that I want to write, but the pressure I feel to create pretty, editorial-esque blog posts is just not nice. I feel so disconnected with blogging now, and it’s become this huge block that I just can’t seem to get past. Months have passed since I posted properly, and while I’m being frank with you, I can admit that I feel like just deleting the whole thing.
The thing is, I was one of the ‘early bloggers’. I sat at my computer, posted cruddy photos (by today’s standards) and just wrote about my life. I didn’t feel the need to keep to a posting schedule or have a million social media outlets to promote myself with. And you know what? That was OK! I had a handful of loyal readers that actively engaged and interacted with me… readers who felt like they cared about me, the person behind the blog. For me, those early blogging days were the best… It didn’t matter if your photos weren’t perfectly lit and edited, or if you didn’t post for weeks on end. It didn’t matter if you posted about clothes that were no longer in stores, nor if you had the latest lipstick or eyeshadow palette. There was no expectation to produce magazine quality content, which now seems to be the norm in the blogging world.
For many, many people, blogging has become a legit way to earn money, and whilst there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, it’s so disheartening to those of us who don’t have that goal. Some of us just want to write about our lives, and genuinely couldn’t care less if we never earn a penny whilst doing so. I see tons and tons of ‘blogging advice’ posts, which are essentially telling us that you need to do X, Y and Z to be a ‘good blogger’. Yet in almost all of these posts, there is a little note in there that tells us that it’s our blog and we should do what we want… So which is it?!
I have made a promise to myself not to give up on blogging… But to embrace it for what it is – a little space online that is all my own where I can post whatever the heck I want, and most all of, just enjoy writing.