The above quote is so true. When you examine your own habits or your attitude to life, what do you notice? And be honest with yourself. Are you always in a rush, even when eating a meal? Never really savouring each bite? Are you always leaving things to the last minute? Getting ready for work, packing for your vacation, doing your homework? Are you always running late? Do you tend to avoid confrontation, but to the extent that prevents you from speaking your truth?
To be honest, all of the above applies to me (although rushing my meals only happened after I became a mother, I'm normally a slow eater!), but the point is, that how we handle the little things in life is a reflection of how you handle ALL situations in life.
I recently made the decision to merge my two blogs into one. I thought that I needed to create two different blogs with two different identities, in order to connect with two different audiences: those interested in the motherhood journey, and those interested in all my other musings on cryptocurrency, my acting career, and life in general. However, after only a couple of weeks of writing almost every day, whilst also being a mother to my two little ones, it started to become quite stressful doing double the amount of work to cater to my two different audiences, thus turning out to be counterproductive.
Last night, I found myself wide awake, unable to sleep due to thinking about the mounting work that I'd given myself for my blogs; which posts to write next, which posts from other people's blogs I needed to read, comments I needed to make, comments I needed to reply to, etc, etc. And all this while co-sleeping with my boys (we live in a one bed apartment with a king size bed and a cot bed side car!) trying not to wake anyone up with the light from my phone screen. In that moment, I realised that something had to change, otherwise, my writing would soon become a source of stress rather than joy, which would inhibit me from producing quality content for the audiences that I was catering to; and then it suddenly dawned on me - the only audience that I needed to cater to, was me.
I needed to remember exactly why I started blogging in the first place. Yes, I want to connect with other likeminded people, yes, I want to make a difference in other people's lives, and yes, I want to make the world a better place. However, none of that will ever happen if I don't write for myself, first and foremost.
This was a painful lesson that I learned when writing a screenplay for a production company a few years ago. They liked a previous script I'd written and wanted me to write something for them, based on idea they had for the plot. I spent months (writing for free) submitting various drafts, and working on the many notes they would give me - and I'm not saying that notes are bad, because that's pretty much how screenplays get developed for production, but what ended up happening, was that I quickly forgot about my voice as a writer, trying to cater to every single note that I was given. I had created my own Frankenstein, and I hated it. My experience with that particular script actually put me off writing in general, I had started to associate it with unhappiness and lost all confidence in myself.
Writing from the heart, with your own voice, is not only authentic, but also a demonstration of respect for yourself and for the reader. I think that you can always tell when someone isn't being genuine with their writing, producing content for the sake of producing content, rather than being true to themselves.
So, in the spirit of authenticity, I am combining the forces of my two blogs into one voice, speaking from the heart about all things that I feel are important to share with others, but most of all, things that are important to me.
Bump and Beeyond, meet DramaMama, I know that you'll get on just fine.
And by the way, if anyone knows how to share posts on Steemit via Wordpress (or vice-versa) to save me time so that I don't have to copy and paste everything, please let me know as it'd be much appreciated!
Stay authentic guys. X
(Image taken from Pexe)
