When you're a freelance journalist for fun AND funds, it can be very difficult to know what to keep for yourself. Things I'd previously just written about on here suddenly have the potential for a larger audience and for financial gain, so inevitably they find themselves on other publications, under other banners and written in a way that fits a house style, a specific guide.
I love each and every publication I write for, but recently I've been craving the release that comes from just typing typing typing, in your own voice, with no regard for sentence length or word count, just to share thoughts and feelings and fleets of consciousness. I'm in a new home, with a new workspace and I'm feeling like now might be time to reconnect with an old friend in the form of this blog. I seek the calm of playing around on photoshop, of self-timing shoots in my messy bedroom and of publishing as and when I feel like I have something to say. Everyone could read it or nobody could; each outcome is fine with me.
Still, it's an intimidating prospect, to start something up again when so many people are killing it in this industry and all we ever hear is what an oversaturated and deadened market blogging is. It's human nature to want to be good at something, even when that something is mainly for yourself. But the key, I suppose, is not to make it you're be all and end all - there's no need to turn blogging into a job or a chore when my day job is going just fine, thankyou. I'm an academic and a journalist and a shop worker and an eBay seller and a chronic Pinterester - surely I can be a hobby blogger too? Social Media is constantly changing and popularity is all at the whims of algorithms but there's something about blogging that feels permanent, a place on the internet that will always be yours in some shape or form. But similarly, I have my priorities and I know what is important to me to be ace at and what it's okay to be okay at - sometimes good enough is just good enough and that's fine (she tells herself, several times a day). Long story short, after a period of somewhat dialling it in, I'm reading and watching and feeling inspired again, but that doesn't mean I have to promise myself weekly posts or anything of a regularity that becomes more of a stress than a release. Instead, I'll write and I'll create when I'm feeling something, when I've nabbed a killer outfit for a bargain price, when that piece I'm passionate about isn't getting commissioned anywhere fast. Sounds reasonable right? And so, however slowly, I feel like I'm ready to start learning how to blog again - no right or wrong ways, just honest, spontaneous posting, just like things were back where most of us started.
