This is my third time trying to make a blog.
The first time, I got the idea to start one when I realized that blogs are the perfect marriage of photography and writing—two of my passions. It would be easy! I’d always have something to talk about!
Yeah, okay.
Immediately after typing the title of my first post, I sat there and looked at the blank text box for probably an hour before slamming my computer closed and telling myself I had nothing of value to share. People probably wouldn’t want to sit here and “listen” to me ramble even if I did. That was all she wrote. I gave up on the first blog before I even published a damn word. No one even knew I’d tried.
My second attempt was a few years later, when I was really going through it in life. I wanted an outlet that would allow me to express myself while I healed. I figured, if I put it on the internet, someone in all that vastness, also struggling, might stumble across it and relate. I really put myself out there, wrote a bunch of posts, and a few people actually read what I was posting! And then.. a hacker got into my poorly coded website, stole the domain, and locked me out of my own platform. I never found it again. I was so disappointed by the turn of events that I tucked my computer away last year and convinced myself that it wasn’t meant to be.
Here’s the thing, though.
The whole time, I kept having this urge to share something I was writing. I’ve felt it since I can remember. I’ve always had words floating around in my head, waiting to be inked. As a child, I would take a mead notebook and fill it cover to cover with fantastical stories about mermaids or fairies or witches with little black cats. In my teenage years, I wrote short stories and poetry. I even wrote for a newspaper once. I couldn’t get enough, and I loved to share what I was making—until I got in my own way. I ignored the calls to spill my words onto paper (or computer screen) and bottled them, instead.
Cue anxiety.
I was so wrapped up in the belief that what I was publishing had to be polished and perfect or I would be judged for it—or worse, totally invisible to everyone—that I shut down all attempts to be free with my gift for stringing words together. I wrote boring college papers and to-do lists and nothing else. I quit journaling because it would remind me that I wasn’t reaching my full potential. Instead of facing the fear and doing it anyway, I was running and getting wrapped up in a black cloud of stress and angst. I laugh about it now, but there have been times where I couldn’t even caption an instagram post without getting frustrated at myself.
And for what?
The call was always there, waiting patiently for me to acknowledge it. To admit that vulnerability is okay. It’s what makes us relatable. And while I’ve turned this into a deep-feels kind of topic, the paradox is that it really isn’t that deep. It’s a blog post. I let myself get worked up over this, for years. I ignored a part of myself that was dying to just breathe. And all I’d ever needed to do is chill out, and do the thing imperfectly, with love.