I am so happy to be part of the sweet and talented, Hilary of Dean Street Society's Happy Hour Blog Tour to help promote her new book, the 4-Part Entrepreneur Cocktail. She's been working hard on this book based on her own experience and I can't wait to read it and learn from her myself. To celebrate this enormous accomplishment, 30 bloggers and entrepreneurs are taking turns along this tour during the month of November to talk about our own struggles, inhibitions, learnings, strengths and weaknesses pertaining to blogging and creating.
A little background.
For me, blogging started out as a suggestion from a friend, something to try and totally a hobby. Today, 4 years later, it's still a hobby, but an important creative outlet that I love spending time doing (or I wouldn't be doing it). Besides having a space to share, creating content that I love and hope to inspire others with, it keeps me seeking out more from life to experience and push myself to be a better version of me. I've also met so many other amazing people I otherwise would never have known. That's the overarching reason why I blog, but the specific reasons constantly change. My blog is a reflection of how my life is evolving and my family is growing off the internet.
How it all began.
Originally, my blog was not personal - it was about fashion and home things that I loved and things that inspired me. It slowly started including more of me and became about how I was using that inspiration in my own life, to style myself, outfit my home, experience more of life, etc. And then, my husband and I got pregnant. I couldn't hide my growing belly or this huge life change from the pages of my site, and by sharing, found myself connecting to other ladies all over who were also pregnant or recent new moms. Once my baby arrived, I kept him out of my blog for the most part, but that became unnatural since he is a huge part of my life. Sure, I was still looking for inspiration and exercising my own creativity in how I dressed and photos I took, but now I was growing as a mother with ups and downs and learnings that I wanted to share, since I so appreciated all the other mama's out there that shared their stories.
Making it personal.
So, my family started inching into more and more of my posts - from how we spend our time together, experiences and learnings we have with our toddler and my now-second pregnancy. The roots of this blog still exist, I still share how I remain creative with my own style, now just showing how that applies in the world I experience it within. I personally love this new way of working in all my passions, as this site has turned into a way to chronicle our own family's story. It's also a great place that our friends and family can follow along and something we can look back on. An added bonus has been meeting and connecting to so many other's that I do not know who read this blog or have a blog of their own.
Struggles with how much to share.
But in staying true to my life and documenting real stories, I struggle with when to share and when to hold back in such a public space. I want this to be a space that I, myself, love coming to look back on all the different points of my life and to see how my family has grown throughout the years in all it's truth. It can be scary to have all that be so public, but I love reading about the lives of other's through their own blogs, and realize how inspiring sharing can be. I also believe that by sharing, I feel encouraged to be more creative in the way I live my own life, to get out and experience more of life than maybe we might have. It keeps me wanting to be better... in everything I do.
So at the end of the day...
You have to do what makes you happy as long as in remains in the safety and happiness of your entire family. If it ever gets to a point where I feel like I have to force content to happen or I'm not happy reading my own stories, I will rethink my approach to this site. Right now, I'm just enjoying sharing what we already do (and some of the thousands of photos I already take) and looking back on how I've grown.
My advice to any new bloggers out there is to incorporate what you already love into your blog. Because if you are sharing what inspires you most and the things you love, your content will reflect that and readers will feel that passion. You also have to be ok with evolving and changing over time. What you say now, might not apply to your life next month. Be open to change to stay true to who you really are off-line. And lastly, don't take other's too seriously. There might be blogger-hate sites out there or readers that don't agree with you or like how your blog is evolving, but if you are truly making content for yourself first, those things will not matter.
Quote from the book, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
{a great resource for connecting with your inner creativity}
Do any other bloggers/content creators out there struggle with how personal to get? And if you are a reader, do you appreciate a real-life glimpse into the lives of the people behind their blogs?
P.S. Make sure to check out yesterday's post by
Katie about what motivates her, and tomorrow
Heather will share her story! This tour really has so many different, yet all uniquely talented, women to meet (if you haven't yet) and learn from! I've enjoyed finding more inspiration and definitely bookmarking this tour for ongoing bits of encouragement in the times to come. And huge congrats to
Hilary on her accomplishments!
You can pre-order the book right now: Click here to view more details
