*This post is Day Six of the January Nablopomo 30-day blogging challenge hosted by BlogHer.
Here’s a picture of my son that I’m sharing for no reason other than that I think it’s adorable.
I tried, quite diligently, for about a year, to get in the habit of writing to a niche. I decided this was a homesteading/homeschooling blog and that was that and I wasn’t going to write about anything else in this space. I shared a few of my favorite homesteady-type recipes because it seems like all of the bloggers I know who have 987 million views per day are food bloggers. I wrote about the various resources we use to help our children continue to learn and grow. It was all very “professional.”
I sort of hated it.
It was fine for a while. I had a lot to say about homesteading/homeschooling. After all, it’s how we live. Every day provides “blog fodder.” But then I started finding myself writing what had already been written. You can do a Google search for “deep litter method” and find thousands of posts about how to set up your chicken coop using that method. You don’t need my views on the subject. Meanwhile, I had all of these other things I wanted to say! I wanted to ask your opinion about an idea I had regarding last week’s sermon at church. I wanted to tell you about the humbling generosity I witnessed at the supermarket. I wanted to write about the amusing things my children said.
But I couldn’t write about that because this wasn’t the appropriate space. This was a homeschooling and homesteading site.
The whole process stopped being fun. I wrote less and less. What I wrote felt dry and uninspiring to me.
I was writing some fun articles for OTHER sites. I was rocking out the best fiction that I’ve ever written in my life. I was working twice as many hours as a writer than I was in my “day job,” but I was beginning to consider dropping my blog. Readership was down. It was becoming work and, Lord knows, I did not need another job.
And here is one of my daughter. She’s a keeper, too.
Then I realized one day that I had let someone else define my space. Someone had told me that THEY had become successful by writing in a specific niche. This blog had already achieved a moderate level of success. Why did I feel the need to compare myself to them and do what they did? What can I say? I’m flawed.
So it was that I made the full-circle journey from writing about whatever crossed my mind to writing for a niche back to writing about… well… OK. I don’t share EVERY thought that comes across my mind. Trust me. It’s for the best. I suppose that you could say I tried to break the habit of random writing and failed but, you know, I’m OK with that. I ended up with a blog that is, once again, becoming what it was when I loved it most: One woman’s journey to save the planet, promote world peace and raise productive citizens. That means I often write about homesteading and homeschooling because that’s a huge part of our journey. Some days, though, it might include my thoughts on fracking or why we should be kind to the downtrodden or something to make you giggle because it’s hard to wage war while laughing.
I so hope that you’ll stick around for the journey! The presence of others is what has made it so joyful so far! And if there is anything you’d ever, specifically, like me to write about just leave a comment here or on Facebook or drop me at email and I’ll see what I can do.
Are you, too, seeking to save the earth, promote world peace and raise productive citizens without expending too much effort?
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If we work on our goals together, they may be a little easier to achieve!
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