I’ve hit a bit of a creative slump.
My photos, my writing, my recipes… they all just feel a bit lost and soulless to me at the moment, and I’ve realised that somewhere along the way, I’ve misplaced the heart of this blog.
I started Little Miss Katy to keep myself from being bored, but now I’m more bored than ever.
It’s my own silly fault obviously. (Isn’t it always?)
I (finally) realised that I’ve been following the rules of what I thought I had to be doing to blog, and now it doesn’t feel like my own anymore.
I’m writing posts I feel I should write, because they’re what I’ve always posted, or they’re the ones that do really well with readers, or (brutally honest here) the ones that pay pretty well.
So yes, part of this stupid situation I’ve got myself into is a business thing. I’ve always been pretty open and honest about wanting to work for myself, and I have no shame in saying that. There is nothing wrong with wanting to earn money from a hobby you love.
My problem stems from the fact that in my desperate attempt to start my business, I’ve abandoned the hobby mentality completely. And in the process I’ve made myself miserable, and started to lose my love for the whole bloody thing anyway.
So yeah. Well done, Me.
The pressure I’ve been putting on myself to write posts I’ve agreed to, and posts I know people will read, means my words have dried up completely.
Same with my photography. The pressure of feeling like all my photos should be perfect for Instagram, means that I’m not even taking any other photos anymore. If it doesn’t fit my “theme”, I don’t bother to snap it at all.
And how utterly fucking stupid is that?!
I’ve been struggling with this for months and months. Every redesign, every announcement of new content changes and new ideas and new plans… it all comes back to this. It comes back to me not being honest and truthful with myself.
And I’m so angry and disappointed in myself for that.
I’m fuming that my brain has led me down this path, and I’m scared and anxious about what this means for the future.
Deep down, I don’t want to quit my blog. Partly because I love the individual components of what blogging entails. Partly, because the thought of quitting another dream makes me feel physically sick.
Call it what you like: pride, stubbornness, stupidity, but I refuse to fail again. And I especially refuse to fail just because my brain is being a whiny insecure bitch. Again.
I want to be successful. I want to be able to work from home, and pay my rent and bills with money I’ve earned doing something I love. I want to be able to travel on my own schedule. I want to work long hours, but at the times I set myself.
But I can’t do it by doing what I’ve been doing so far. I think it’s Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.
Well at the moment, what I’m doing over and over again is following some bizarre set of “blogging rules” that I seem to have made up for myself and then internalised. “Rules” that are making me miserable and (I realise now) actually holding me back from the success I’ve so desperately been chasing.
So I guess the next logical step in this equation is to ditch the rules, stop giving a fuck, and just do what I want.
(Isn’t it funny? I’ve felt nervous and emotional and horrible the whole time I was writing this. And as soon as I wrote that last line, I did a little smirk to myself. I know you don’t like swearing, Mum, but there’s definitely something therapeutic about it…)
