Sometimes even your rebrand needs a rebrand.
When I first started blogging, three years ago, I imagined I’d mirror Carrie Bradshaw. Sitting at home in front of my computer each week writing a post on my recent experiences and sharing my lessons or reflections with the world hoping that they help direct at least one person. Unfortunately it wasn’t that easy. When I started blogging I was hungry for the advice from other bloggers. What can I do to further my reach? Do I have to only put out educational content? How niched does my content need to be?
The more questions I asked and the more information I consumed, turned into this overwhelming feeling of failure. I began second guessing my content. With each post I put out, I felt as though I was putting out the work of someone else. It didn’t feel like me. What started as a fun passion project of documenting my experiences turned into a saturated unfamiliar writing assignment.
In the beginning of 2021 I felt like I finally had an understanding of the type of content I wanted to put out. I found some other writers who really just spoke to me and I knew that’s the direction I wanted to go in. (Finally!) After years of flip flopping from niche to niche this felt like home. I started the year of strong. Incorporating my current experiences into my content. But it still didn’t fully feel like me. Instead of writing about where I was truly at in life, I was following the style of these other bloggers. “Oh she did a post on this? I could do one on that.” It still didn’t feel authentic to me – because it wasn’t. It was because of this that I ended up burning out in October. I was so focused on becoming what I thought would work I forgot to check in with myself.
So I was forced to take a 3 month breather.
I had to take a step back to unlearn every blogging habit I took on over the years. I have always been so focused on “being a blogger”, I never asked myself what that meant to me. The reason why I started doing this.
I love writing. It has always been my escape. I was an avid writer in school. I loved writing essays, stories, you name it. But once I graduated it became something I rarely did. One year in my 20s I found myself in a rut. I would go to work, come home, party on weekends, repeat. I didn’t have anything else. So one day I sat down and listed off the things I love to do. After I created a sub list for each item. What is one thing I can do utilizing this like of mine? That’s how I was directed to blogging. I wanted to combine my love for writing with my want to figure out my life. This was an opportunity to not only share my journey but document it for myself and learn. Figure my shit out.
If you’re still reading – you are appreciated.
Today I am turning a new page. I am shutting out all of the unnecessary noise and doing things the way I want to. I want to put out my story without feeling like I need to add some type of educational value to everything. Life isn’t always that easy. We don’t always have all of the answers and we can’t always wrap everything up in a few paragraphs. The focus of my platform will now be that little corner of the internet that isn’t always polished, a weekly check in of real life shit, and place for you to relate to someone you don’t know. We all go through it. I want to be that reminder that you’re not alone. I’m still trying to figure it out just like everyone else.
What do you think?