Perfectionism and the reasons why I blog

I’m super close to the 2 year anniversary of my little space on the internet and I’ve never felt the need to write a post talking about what it all means to me until now. You may or may not have noticed my irregular appearances on this blog and this is not a post talking about excuses why I haven’t been churning up content but a heart to heart about what I’ve been feeling. I have always wanted to write ever since I was a child. I would spend hours even as a ten year old conjuring up make believe stories about bears, children, haunted houses and so on. It was my favourite thing to do and a part of who I was and have grown up to be.

Fast forward to present day, it is still my escape, a medium to calm myself or gain perspective of things I’ve been feeling. Nothing answers my questions better than writing does. Although the subjects of my writing have changed as I have grown from childish things to more adult things like life, advice and of course beauty which is one of my passions. However, the need to write down my thoughts and opinions on it has remained unchanged. Even when I’m not writing here, I am still writing somewhere. Be it journals, my planner or adding to my folder full of unpublished word files because some bits of writing are too personal to share sometimes.

The reason blogging really spoke to me when I first discovered it is the fact that I was doing it anyway but wasn’t publishing it on the internet. It is a wonderful place to share your thoughts that also gives you a chance to learn of others’ opinions and start a conversation with them that wasn’t possible before when only I was doing it. Of course, I didn’t know all about the rules and “certain restrictions” that come with blogging if you want to grow it and bring more attention to it. After all the new knowledge I’ve been gaining , my blog space has evolved to much more than it's beginning stages and so have the expectations to be perfect at it. It can easily lead to feeling a little overwhelmed with it all.  Despite all of that I can confidently say it is the best decision I’ve ever made.

It is so much more to me than internet fame or getting rich. Sure, I have some blogging aspirations like everyone else. I’d like to reach a larger number of readers, achieve better numbers and what not but above all I wanted to start this place to inspire people like I have constantly felt inspired by writing myself. While that’s a distant dream, I really enjoy the process that leads up to it. It’s a tough one but something that I am willing to put myself up to and time is not a barrier.

I have two months to go before I graduate from a very gruelling course and hand in my thesis/portfolio. It’s a time in my life when 24 hour days feel more like 2 hours and they’re over in the blink of an eye. I’ve been trying to work day and night to make sure I have something worthwhile at the end of it all. However, I feel creatively deprived. How is it possible to be in a creative field/course of study and still feel that way? I miss creating posts and planning out more content for my blog which has currently taken bit of a back seat. Maybe it’s my conscious trying to tell me something ever so subtly.  

There is a sense of guilt that hits me every time I’m neglecting my work to do things for the blog and vice versa. I’m stuck in a battleground where both sides demand my attention. While one is “supposedly” the top priority, the one that’ll decide my future or so people say and the other is the one my heart is craving for. I know if I’m asked to choose, I’d choose blogging in a heartbeat but I’m trying to do the “right” thing at the moment.

Being a perfectionist, I’ve been letting opportunities, mediocre photos and pieces of writing sit in my drafts until I can give my 100% to it. Not having written anything valuable for the blog in over 1-2 weeks and even before that being quite sporadic at it has made me realize how much all this means to me, to my soul above all. It pushes me to do things I’d never have dreamed of; it makes me a confident person and helps me understand myself more than I have ever been able to. I am so close to the end of one challenging but important chapter and while that may or may not be what I do for the rest of my life, it needs to be addressed and it’s time is “now”. I really hope my blogging “mojo” comes back to me and stronger than ever. I hope I can articulate my thoughts a bit more clearly and gain the courage to hit “post” on several occasions I probably shouldn’t be afraid of. This little attempt at an ode to blogging was in order and in the wake of my current life situation, it is so much more relevant than I could have ever imagined.