Hey friends – long time no chat. As odd as this may seem, I was scared to post.
You may call it a self fulfilling prophecy, or maybe it isn’t actually that deep, but I realized that my fear of failure made me fail.
7 years ago I started this blog, in attempt to become creatively fulfilled, and share my college experience with you all. AKA – for FUN. I’ve always loved writing and creating and I had a lot of fun making this blog into my own little corner of the internet where I could post my dorm decor and share how I kept myself organized in college. Then, it took off. Before I knew it over a 100,000 of you were reading this every single month. My Pinterest account blew up (that’s likely where a lot of you came from!) and before I knew it I was making money by getting sponsored by some amazing brands. This was like the very beginning of the whole “influencer” thing, and it was wild to think that I could actually make money from a blog.
Then, I panicked.
Writing here became less and less fun and more like a chore. I was so focused on providing value and advice and having all the right answers to exactly what you were looking for. I was so in my head, convinced that nobody wanted to actually read anything about my daily life anymore, but instead you needed me to solve your problems. It wasn’t fun anymore.
Looking back now, nobody was putting this pressure on anything here besides me. I was setting standards for myself that were way too high, I was deciding that I needed to do more and provide more, and worst of all I was convinced that I couldn’t do it – so what was the point?
I was scared to fail at these high standards I was setting, I was scared to let myself down, so I stopped.
While writing this, I just realized… this definitely isn’t the first time this has happened to me.
I used to play softball, and I loved it. I was also halfway decent at it. After a few years, I suddenly got in my own head about it and became scared to swing at the ball. I was scared that I suddenly wouldn’t be good at it, that I wouldn’t hit the great hits I had been doing anymore. I was scared of failing. So I stopped swinging. I got moved to last place on the roster and would just stand there and watch the ball go by, striking out without swinging every time. This happened for a while. My dad worked really hard with me to get my confidence up, and whenever I swung at practice I did great, but as soon as I got up there in a game I choked up.
Have you ever heard the quote “never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game”? That’s literally what happened.
Oddly enough, the way I got through this was my dad bribed me. Yep, he bribed his 10 year old daughter. He told me he’d give me a few dollars every time my bat made contact with the ball during a game. No matter how the hit was, as long as I made contact with the ball I got a few bucks. So, I swung. Before I knew it I was killin’ it, hitting great hits and scoring runs left and right. (I guess I’ve always been a little money motivated…)
Writing on this blog began as a hobby, and after a while I lost sight of that and forced myself to fail so that I couldn’t accidentally let myself down.
I miss it. I miss writing and creating for fun.
So, let’s try to do that again, shall we? I’m going to start writing here again, start posting cheesy videos and photos on my Instagram, and start having fun. Some things I post will be helpful, like I used to post, but to be honest – not all of it will be helpful and provide value. Some of it will just be sharing and writing for the sake of writing.
Thank you for reading this far and thank you for being here with me – I hope you’ll stick around 🙂
