Oh, gentle reader, what a long journey we have been on together. On September 27, 2009, I wrote my very first blog post on The Art of the Business. I had been guest-posting on Simon Ogden’s The Next Stage blog since January 31, 2008, and I decided it was time for me to jump out of the nest and start my own blog.
On October 25, 2010, I relaunched my site under rebeccacoleman.ca, in its current form. As of today, I’ve been blogging, in some form or another, for four years, and on a thrice-weekly basis for three years.
But lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m running out of steam. It’s partly about inspiration. But truthfully, the world of social media chugs on, and there isn’t really any lack of things to write about. It’s just getting harder and harder to bring words to the page when I sit down with my MacBook.
Am I running out of things to say? Am I getting burnt out? Am I less ‘hungry’?
I don’t know if this happens to you, but I find that every few years, I go through a “shake up” time in my life. While I’m going through it, it’s horrible and stressful, but I know that it’s good for me, because it makes space in my life for new experiences and personal growth. 2011 was one of those times for me.
My life shifted in many ways: both in terms of personal relationships, and also in terms of work. In 2011 I decided I was going to cut back on freelance publicity work to better focus on teaching, and that’s been great. But because I’m teaching, I don’t feel the need to ‘hustle’ so much for work. And part of hustling was me writing this blog, so that people who read it would come to think of me as an expert in my field.
As a teacher, I still have to be up-to-date on the latest social media and marketing trends, so that’s not going to change. But I’ve made the decision to cut back on the amount of posts I write per week here, to 1-2 per week. There is other writing I want to do: both for my cooking blog, and I have also started a longhand journal again, which I am using as a way of processing through this period of growth and development. Who knows where that will lead?
So, I just wanna say, thanks for reading. And thanks for sticking with me over these last few months when I’ve been struggling. And that I’m not abandoning you. Your encouragement and kind words, in fact, are why I’m still here.
Let’s see what the future brings, shall we?
