A Writer, a Poet or a Blogger?

I like to think of myself as a writer.

In school, it was one of the only things I felt really good at – a subject I really enjoyed learning. One of my high school English teachers told me I was a true grammarian (nerdy and even embarrassing – I know).

Throughout high school I wrote lots of poetry, some of which my brother even put to music and we sang together.

Midway through college, I had just finished an extremely powerful, emotional, and life-shaking novel. It led me to my first “epic” poem based off of the emotions I experienced while reading the story. It was the first time I had tried to write a poem in a while, but it ended up being totally different than I had ever written before and one of my absolute favorites.

I don’t think I’ve written a true poem since. I consistently tell myself passively that I need to write poems again.

But now I’m a blogger. 

Since I made the conscious decision to create a blog and attempt to dedicate a good deal of time and effort into getting it started and something I can be proud of, I’ve struggled to find the inspiration to write. I do believe a truly good writer can write even without the emotional inspiration to jumpstart the process, and I try to push myself in this way, but inspiration and motivation are still quite critical.

I’m going to be open and admit some things that honestly, for whatever reason, are somewhat embarrassing to say publicly.

As I began to work on building this blog, I started researching things like blog scheduling, best times to publish, how to best use social media to promote your blogs, types of content to include, etc. I studied other blogs which I considered to be “professional” and successful. I toyed with whether to brainstorm on strictly controversial topics to get a lot of traffic and comments. I inwardly debated on whether it’s ethical to create a catchy title just to attract views.

For all of that, I will say this, I do believe it’s good to be a good steward of gifts, to work diligently to develop skills and be disciplined. Many of the things I described above, if not all of them, I don’t think are inherently wrong. I love debating controversial topics with people who don’t take it personally, but my conscience doesn’t always give me the go-ahead to make the place for that this public blog. Since blogging and writing is a priority for me, I think it was a responsible thing for me to research the “art” or “business” of blogging – and I enjoyed learning about it.

What is hard to admit is that all of that got in the way of truly enjoying the simplicity of writing just to write and writing just what comes. 

I still want to write well and plan and prioritize blogging to build my skills. I want to use this blog as a platform for helping others, relating with others, and even for a little personal therapy 🙂 But I don’t want to get bogged down with everything I think I should do as a blogger and forget the writer I enjoy being and want to become.

So starting this week, there may be a few different types of posts being published. I hope you’ll still enjoy!