Four Year reflection of the Blogging Life
Hello my loyal readers! Happy Friday, and the last Friday of the month of March. How can April be coming to us already, and be a quarter through the year of 2021? How is it going for you so far for you?
For me it has certainly been a whirlwind! We started planning our wedding with solidifying a date, picking a venue, and booking our photographer. Work was really crazy, then calmer, and about to get crazy again. I also had some stressful car stuff go on, and my insomnia flared up really bad.
Going into April I will be starting a new job role and adding on additional responsibilities. Being only six months into my current role a part of me feels like I am starting over with learning a new job. I am also going to be participating in the Love Sweat and Fitness Spring Slim Down Challenge over these next six weeks, which I will be capturing on the blog Instagram page. I am really excited but also nervous about both of these changes in my life.
“Sometimes life comes in and surprises you with twist and turns. Just when you think you have it all together that is when life laughs and says I will prove you wrong.”
I thought I knew what I was doing when I started this blog four years ago, but if I am being honest I had no idea and still don’t most of the time. In this post I wanted to spend some time reflecting on this little blog of mine, and where I am at in my journey as a blogger.
Why I started
I started mapping out this blog during my winter break from work at the end of 2016. At the time I still lived in Georgia. It was on New Years Day of 2017 that I finally took the plunge and started building out my blog website. Prior to graduate school I thought about venturing into the blogging world, but I quickly realized it would be hard to manage, so I put my blogging dreams on hold.
Ever since I was in middle school I always wanted to find a way to write my journey and share it with the world. To help the next generation, and give them hope that everything will be okay and turn out the way it’s meant to be. Often times I have talked about writing a memoir of a sort with my closest friends, and still would like to someday, but felt I needed to develop as a writer first. To me blogging was a great middle ground that would help me strengthen myself as a writer, and provide me with a place to deliver it.
Part of me started my blog because I was trying to find “connection” during the time of life when my blog was born. I was alone in a state four hours away from the people I loved the most and battling depression. A part of me felt lost without being a student anymore, and wanted to find something I could be passionate about that didn’t involve pursuing another degree. I felt like everything I had worked for to create that life I was living was for nothing because in that moment I wasn’t truly happy.
“I knew I needed to make a change and to find inspiration in life again and to refocus my mission in it.”
After that realization my blog was born on March 17th, 2017.
What I enjoy about it
Now I am not going to lie, blogging is much harder than I ever thought it would be when I first started. It is easy to write things out but getting people to read posts is a challenge. This is a challenge I am still trying to figure out to this day. I know I haven’t done the cardinal rules of blogging like posting multiple times a week, so I try not to judge myself to harshly with the lack of followers, likes, comments, etc. It is hard though because you want to know if people are reading what you write, and what they take from it. Until I have reader engagement, and knowing if I am actually helping people or not, I have to find other ways to enjoy blogging.
For me the biggest thing I enjoy with blogging is how it really makes me stretch my muscles in so many areas of life. It makes me stretch my writing muscles, creativity, content creation, and branding. It also helps me practice and stretch my muscles in vulnerability, transparency, and helps me live more authentically. I vowed that when I started my blogging journey I was going to stick to being real first and foremost.
“Real in what I talk about and how I live my daily life. “
Throughout the past four years I have found that writing my blog posts helps me process through things going on in my life, or goals I am working on. It helps me gain perspective and challenge my way of thinking and sorting out of information. Writing has always been a very cathartic process, so it is neat that writing my blog does that for me.
I always feel a sense of pride and accomplishment when I plan out a post and bring it to life. It is a good feeling when you see what you are thinking come to life through words and storytelling. I imagine this is how great musicians and writers feel when they are able to write out a story in a song.
Where I see it going
This is hard to answer fully because so much of me still feels like I am trying to discover what my blog actually is. When describing my blog I am always going back and forth between “lifestyle blog” and “personal blog.” To me blogging is a personal business, but so many topics I am interested in involves lifestyle choices. From making healthy habits and finding ways to integrate them into daily life, to focusing on different areas of health and bettering ourselves.I also know I love reflecting and documenting life journeys and experiences. Being an adult is hard at times, and discovering and rediscovering your best self is a constant journey no matter your age.
The best part of my blog is how adaptable it is to whatever I want to talk about. To me I feel like I can add to it or change the focus whenever I see fit as I go through life. This is also a blogging cardinal rule I am breaking, but I just couldn’t fit myself into a singular box when I know there is so much more to me than one area. I look forward to seeing what it becomes as I become a wife, go through changes and growth in my professional career, and how I discover parts of myself along the way.
I hope to one day have an audience that I write content for that never goes out of style with the many parts of life.To have an audience that I can engage in conversation with, talk to them, and know who they are and what they like to read and see. Mostly I just want to create a space for my readers where they feel they are not alone in how they are feeling in the many different parts of life.
“As a person and writer my ultimate dream is to just know that what I write and say meant something for someone.”
I hope you enjoyed this reflection of the blog, and hopefully learned a little bit more about why I started it and what I want it to be. This blogging space of mine is young, and in all reality we are just getting started with it.
Until next time,
