I recently put hand-to-keyboard and blogged. It had been such a long time – a year – since I’d pressed Publish on a blog.
Honestly, I didn’t think I had anything to say.
No books for you to read (yet…), no huge news (probably like all of us in the year 2020) and maybe a case of writer-comparison-syndrome, which tends to shut down everything else.
Then I dug deeper, to think about my why.
The answer surprised me.
Enter stage Perfectionism.
Maybe you know the feeling?
“Unless I have something wonderful, game-changing and profound with professional photographs, it’s not worth doing”.
Hey I even plastered this Charles Dickens quote over my CV a while ago: “anything worth doing is worth doing well.”
Which it turns out, may not have come from Charles Dickens but Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield. It’s officially this: “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.”
A good idea but, in some people, the concept behind it can stop us from even trying.
I used to blog all the time. I started it back in 2008, which is a long time in Blog-Land!
The words flowed on whatever theme struck me – faith, ancient history, call-to-arms to fellow writers, some DIY and lots of opp0shopping related posts.
Then I guess I stopped writing because I started to categorise more than create. I started to overthink it.
Thoughts began to circle like, “Hmmm… where does this fit?” And worse, “Does this go with my brand?”
The more I categorised (and got lazy) and thought, the more fearful I became. Of having a voice. And writing to “only add value” to people’s lives, not just post “content chaff”.
I think by now you’re sensing my realisation: I was too hard on myself. I was too hard on my poor blog.
Blogs are meant to be alive, imperfect, changing and usually – not fitting within any prior categories. (And the fix is easy, just make another category.)
Photo by Tom Leishman on Pexels.com
I’ll leave you with what I realised, and I hope it may help you too:
Who am I decide what is “adding value” to someone’s life?
How can I judge what might resonate with a reader I may not have ever met?
Such is the power of writing, of words – and only one thing is needed for us writers: to have the courage to press Publish. Let’s do it!
Anna Kosmanovski 