I figured it out! Maybe…

I think I finally have a plan. Maybe?

As I have begun this "journey" into writing and becoming a published author (even putting that phrase down on paper feels so.....I don't know....presumptuous? ick) I am quite sure I have spent more time thinking about writing than actually doing any of the writing.

And when I say thinking about writing what I actually mean is I'm thinking about why I'm not writing more than I am.

After all this thinking I’ve come up with two main reasons I’m blocked.

First, some of the stuff I want to write about doesn't necessarily mesh with my current audience.

I could post on facebook and share with all of the people I knew in high school or college or worked with at some point in my past. I could share on Instagram to all the people I have connected with in the creative small business and photography industry. I could tweet to pretty much zero followers who have no idea who I am...but that audience would feel like the stuff I’m writing about is coming out of left field.

Secondly, our current "content at all costs" culture is extinguishing my desire to create, to express, to do something just for the sake of doing it. The validation of the hearts, likes, shares is messing with my head.

It's no secret that we have officially entered the era of everyday infamy. There are so many more famous people who are way less famous. Our lives are posted, snapped, tweeted, storied and reel'ed, and somewhere behind all of that we think....if I do this just right, I might go viral, I might get hundreds of stars/likes/retweets/hearts, I might become......internet famous.

It's an easy trap to fall into. Especially as a business owner. Content marketing is the name of the game nowadays and if you aren't doing it, you might as well close up shop right? Wrong. But dang if it feels right.

These past few weeks as I've been really focusing on spending more time doing this thing that I love and wondering why I'm having so much of an issue actually getting anything out, I realized that its this phenomenon (the current desperation, near panic and chaos of the social media world) that has been one of my biggest obstacles.

There is the writing and then there is the everything else.

The everything else includes identifying your audience, establishing your brand, determining your voice, deciding your content pillars, tweaking your marketing, working to increase your numbers, your views, your shares, your likes.....

It's the everything else that has infected every part of my mind, especially being a business owner for the past 10 years. I'm so used to everything having to be fiddled with, pinched and prodded until you are able to figure out how to get the customers you want to buy the thing you are selling.

The infection runs deep. But now that I have identified what the problem is, I have come up with a plan to hopefully stop it from spreading further so I can get back to what I initially intended on doing: the writing.

It's a plan that feels wrong on so many levels...which is funny and maybe even ironic (I never know if I'm using that word right) because 10-15 years ago this plan would have been utterly and completely normal.

I'm going to write. And then not share it.

Well, not all of it anyway.

"Pics or it didn't happen" is the perfect phrase to describe how it feels. Like if I don't share what I have created, if I don't share my "content", then it's a waste...it's pointless. Why bother doing anything if you can't use that thing you have created to grow your brand?

When you state it that clearly it sounds awful, but in our current world where content is king, it's the undercurrent buzzing below the surface in our everyday lives. If we don't want it to get louder and louder we have to consciously do things that don't feed it.

I remember what it was like (it wasn't that long ago after all) to create something simply for the sake of creating. I remember feeling something and then expressing those feelings physically through some sort of artistic medium...writing, painting, photography, building a business. I remember feeling proud and accomplished for simply creating something meaningful to me, not for how well it would perform.

I want to reclaim some of that. I want to create just to create.

I want to write for the sake of writing, to let the words flow out of me without the cloud of worry hovering over me, pressuring me to use a click bait-y title, making sure I choose the best thumbnail possible, speaking directly to what my audience needs, and most importantly: focusing on being my authentic self without apologizing while at the exact same time making sure I don't say anything remotely "problematic" that might get me cancelled.

Because creativity will surely just flow while you are worried about all of those rules right?

So that's the plan. I'm going to challenge myself to write knowing that I will not be sharing what I write....at least not anytime soon. I'm going to write freely without the shackles of "audience building" weighing me down.

I'm going to work through the uncomfortable feeling of having to prove that I'm doing something worthy and valuable. Just because there isn't pics doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I know it happened.

Maybe sharing will come later. Maybe after I simply focus on practicing and crafting well written pieces I am proud of, I will have more brain space to figure out what to do from there.

In addition to focusing on that type of writing, I will also continue to publish blog posts on my new writing website that are similar to what I have been publishing over the past couple of months. I have enjoyed the "This is Me" series as well as the weekly recaps for our 75 difficult challenge, so I'm going to continue doing those as well as morphing the 75D updates into general weekly recaps. My "current" audience is interested in who I am as a person, so publishing and sharing these posts feels more natural and fluid to me. I'm going to lean into that and use those posts as continued practice.

I've also decided to work on a large scale project where I am documenting every year of my life. I have a history of documenting things that have happened in my life in the past and there is something to be said about remembering and documenting your own timeline. I have loved the start of this project and am looking forward to building it out even more. I will be sharing some of this journey on my website as well.

I'm excited for my new plan. I am a person who needs a little structure and guidance in order to get things accomplished so I'm feeling good about having more structure now. I'm also looking forward to working through these uneasy feelings of creating just to create without any sort of validation. I'm so interested to see what I learn.

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