Spoiler alert: you don’t.
I reached my six year milestone a few days ago. I’ve been coming to this site since 2009, have written 1800+ posts, and I feel like I should have an abundance of blog knowledge to share. I mean six years is a long ass time. I should be a pro at this by now, shouldn’t I? So get ready for all of the wonderful advice I’m about to drop…
(crickets.)
Sometimes I feel like I’m moving at a snail speed in this world (because I am.) Every time I see a new girl on Instagram post a photo of herself holding a bouquet of balloons, wearing a tutu, and proclaiming “I just hit 30k followers, ya’ll! Can’t believe I’ve already been blogging for six whole months!” a little piece of me dies.
I just don’t understand grown women in tutus. I get that Carrie Bradshaw did it, but she was fictional.
But then I also think, damn what’s wrong with me? I get the urge to throw on my tap shoes and bring out a piece of cardboard, desperate for blogging attention. LOOK AT ME! I’M STILL HERE!
In the beginning (like for the first three years) I didn’t care about the business/competition of blogging. I came here to push out a snarky post or two, hit publish and that was that. But once you start caring there’s no going back.
2015 has been the year I’ve made the most significant part of my income from blogging, I’ve been able to travel to some awesome places thanks to blogging, and oddly enough it’s been the year I’ve most thought about throwing in the towel. It just gets to be too much at times. The rat race is exhausting.
For those of you not in the blog world I’m sure you’re rolling your eyes right now, like c’mon you’re a blogger, wank wank... And I get that, but just like any job there’s always going to be competition and envy and the desire to climb higher and do better. With blogging we just all blast it 100 times more for everyone to see.
But I’m getting off course and sounding super annoying. When I start to sound like a sour puss about a job that is actually amazing cool, I know it’s because of two things:
I’ve been comparing myself to others too much.
And I’ve been analyzing my traffic more than I should.
Boom. As simple as that. If you want to stay sane in this dog eat dog world lay off Instagram for awhile, and stop browsing those other blogs that just make life look too damn easy.
And stop looking at your stats. The readers will come back, they always do.
Truthfully, the only reason I get mad at blogging is because I really do enjoy it. And there’s a huge part of me that is scared (and insecure) that this little gig I’ve got going right now is too good to be true and could go away at any minute. So I want to be better and do better and grow this site into something more. I guess you could say I want to be that girl in the tutu?
Except for not a tutu. Never. Ever. Never a tutu.
Thanks for sticking around for this ramble. More importantly, thank you for sticking around for six years of my rambles! That is incredible. People often ask me if working from home is isolating and I say no because I’ve got like 1000 online friends that I respond to all day…. and then I realize how sad that sounds.
Cheers to six more years of online friends. Maybe even sixty-six. Who am I kidding, I’ll be here forever.
And as a thank you, I’m giving away a few of my favorite things today. Nothing grand like a Macbook or baby tiger, just a few things I personally enjoy. A Trina Turk makeup bag, some Ellen Tracy lip gloss, and nail files. If you want to enter it’s really simple, there’s just a few options below.
As always, thanks for stopping by.
