Self-love lessons learned from blogging. Yes. You read it right.
In the last two years that I have been blogging, I rarely had days where blogging didn’t teach me skills I will be needing for the next phase of my career as a writer
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Three months into blogging, a Facebook message from a fellow blogger read something like:
“Your website and articles are good but you must have a niche.”
I didn’t respond. I kept my one-blog-post-worth of answer in my head. Okay. In my journal.
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Having a niche will limit the scope of things I can talk about and really I don’t want to only be able to talk about one thing. I want to be able to talk about how I thought the clouds are following me when I was a child and that to be a mermaid was all I ever dreamt of no matter how much open water terrifies me.
I want to be able to talk about all the random little things.
I mean it’s okay to be able to just talk non-stop about one single topic and to create another blog that will talk about other things too but I didn’t want that.
I trust that if I have readers, they are well rounded individuals who can keep up and would also want to be able to let loose and dream freely.
I am sure that my readers, if I have any, also have thousands of random thoughts and I’m sure they want to feel that it is normal. It is okay to be carried away by our daydreams. Niche can wait once I already got the hang of things and once I have found the way how I truly want to monetize my blog.
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Another message goes like this:
“Your article’s point is good and clear. I am an English teacher and it gives me headache to see misplaced punctuation marks and syntax errors. I don’t want to call your attention on this and make you ashamed about your writing by pointing out the mistakes but I want to help if you like and if it’s okay, I will copy the article from your website and proofread it. I will send you the edited version on Friday afternoon.”
I replied with so much gratitude. I am not so particularly strict when it comes to these punctuation marks and I am not a native English speaker neither so I’m sure that there will see a lot of mistakes.
I just feel pure bliss when I write and I share it. Even if I have Yoast Plug in for SEO stuff, I still ignore it most of the time. I want to be able to write as I please. This is also why I feel so humbled when someone writes to me and comments on my post. Because I write as if no one will read it. I am now only writing for myself.
If truth be told, I post and run. Writing became a very important part of my healing.
Writing has helped me to disconnect.
Writing has been a huge part of my personal growth and development.
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A couple of Friday afternoons passed and I still didn’t receive the edited copy like what the Syntax expert promised. I would think that the message was just a spam but how can it be a spam when it was sent as a Facebook private message to my private Facebook account?
I still want to think that she is a concerned citizen who wanted my grammar to be perfect for the world to see. Maybe the world’s entire problem depended on it. I should not think that she just wanted to remind me that my writing sucks. After all, I am open for criticism because that’s how I will improve.
“You should be in New York and then London and then other countries.”
“But mine is not a travel blog.” I replied. Then no answer.
If I will be honest here, just traveling and non-stop exploring already lost its appeal to me. I want to be able to do something that has meaning. I want to be aligned with my truth. I want to be able to spend my life with purpose. I want a life that will allow me to be the person God has designed me to be.
Mark Manson, the author of The Subtle Art of not Giving a F*ck was right. After traveling so much, a new country will not add so much value anymore.
In fact, being on the road since 2014 is tiring. It has started wearing me off. I just wanted to be at home whenever I can, feed my soul, grow some roots and be part of something with great value. I am still traveling, am I not? Slow traveling life that is. After all, what am I still running away from?
A Pinterest message included a link of a course on how to use Pinterest to generate income. The same person who wanted to help me with it sent it as I started it in July. She offered to be my Virtual Assistant for free in exchange for a review of her performance. I was deeply touched.
I am clueless about how it works and seeing other accounts made me really stressed and pressured. I was tempted to accept her offer but I realized how much learning I will miss if someone will do it for me.
While it will be incredible to have my passion the sole source of my income, I really wanted to learn everything I can from it.
I don’t want to skip anything.
I am willing to see what works and what doesn’t.
I know that I will feel it when I have reached a point where I will need extra pair of hands. I was tempted to take the course and other courses that promised to generate hundreds of thousands of views and thousands of dollars income. Again, I want to be able to say that I did something for myself. So I’m very happy to say that though I only earned 3.15 Euros on my third month of blogging, I feel like a millionaire. I am not in a hurry to earn money from it.
To have a creative outlet for a hobby is more than okay and to be paid just one cent for doing it, I will be ecstatic!
I might have only earned 3.15 Euros but it’s okay. I am enjoying the slow process of growth and with all the other things I have learned in my three months of blogging, I feel like I have won the lottery.
And most importantly, if there’s one thing I have learned from blogging, that is to be unapologetically me and if you are thinking of starting a blog, I hope you don’t beat yourself up by reading other blogs that constantly talk about how much they earn every month. Keep going until you find what feels good for you.
Like how I grew my first blog, This Village Girl, from scratch and how now it’s making money even on my sleep, I am sure, as long as you don’t stop, yours will too.
Blogger tasks never seem to end. Please don’t stress so much about it. Slow progress is sweet and trust me, your hard work will pay off. Take the time you need and learn every step of the way. It’s worth it.
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