On this blog I talked about my daily mental battle as a beginner creator, how I tapped into my true north and what I learned about striving to be authentic in our creations.
estimated reading time: 7 mins
I've been pondering about the last blog that I wrote. Something is missing.
the mental battle
It took me five weeks to finish the previous blog because I was just not motivated enough to write it, some days I just don’t open up my computer at all. I have beaten myself up by believing I failed the day by not showing up. My head keeps telling me that I lack discipline and focus because I procrastinate a lot. I have maybe 10 writing prompts with introductions laid out on 10 different word documents waiting for me to finish. The frustrations seep in day in and day out and all I ponder about is how hard it is to pursue the creative life that I always wanted.
I was tempted to just throw the towel and go back to my secured job. Maybe writing or creating content for a living is a complete delulu and not for me. But then I’ll remember getting ready at 5am in the morning, working for a random institution, working with bosses with goals different from mine.
I do not wish to return to the unending cycle of displeasure.
That thought alone makes me come back to my senses to say ‘it’s too early to quit.’ Either I show up for them or I show up for myself today. I choose the latter. As much as I can, I tried to fight against the idleness. I resort to watching motivational videos, scrolling through inspiring content and listening to podcasts (which may be another way of procrastination but, who knows.)
So back when I finally posted the blog, I noticed that I was not even excited to share it. And when I did share the video, the algorithm didn’t work for it, it had less than a hundred views compared to my first ones with 1000 to 3000+ views. Maybe my video / blog is not engaging enough, or people probably just don’t relate to it. Or, maybe the content is good, but my enthusiasm about it is lacking and it clearly shows.
resurfacing my true north
Now I have to stop myself right here and agree that my enthusiasm is indeed lacking.
The question is, why? I thought I wanted to do this.
Instead of trying to understand the analytics, or other people’s responses (which I have no control over), I tried to dive deep on self-reflection to help me understand a little bit more of my own tendencies and actions. Trying to look for answers, I incidentally started recalling my what, hows and whys for a bit and was surprised that I was able to generate answers based on the things that I really cared about creating.
incihere
I want to create a body of work that shares a piece of my mind. I want to tell stories and share what I learn from other peoples’ stories. I want to journal my creative pursuit or the things that happened behind every trip I had. I want to blog about the art of slow living, home-cooked meals, adult friendships and the beauty of creating our own sacred place within. I want to create and edit videos, have fun and enjoy the process. I want to perform, sing and write songs with purpose. I would love to connect with other humans, to be part of a community of like-minded, creative, and light-hearted people. I would love to write musings in a way that show interest, that make people feel that they are seen and make known to them that there is an actual human on this little corner of the web listening, learning and feeling all these feelings.
I breathed in and breathed out. Acknowledging all of these feels liberating. It felt easy producing these words, like a water flowing out from somewhere within my core.
the wiggle room
Reflecting back on my disconnect, what am I actually missing in my previous blog?
Why do I feel unaccomplished reading it?
It is nice and quite helpful though. But now that I revisited my place of authenticity, I recognized that that specific blog doesn’t share my set of whats, hows and whys. Creating it was not that fulfilling because it was more technical than personal. It seems like it’s a missed opportunity to foster a connection because I almost didn’t include parts of myself in it. It is more about giving out information rather than touch base on relating to the person on the other side of the screen. I lack personal takes and stories to support the recommendations that I listed there. I wasn’t able to share any personal experiences because there are almost none.
Back when I’m still composing that itinerary blog and putting ideas all together, I spent a lot of time looking all over the internet for information about the places that I am writing about. I realized that the pieces I wrote originated mostly from a lot of other videos and websites that I consumed and I just summarized what I have learned about them as how I understood it. One might say it’s research, but I do think that I need to work on relying more on the knowledge that I already have than what I don’t have. I should have nurtured the perspectives that I own and let outside information just add value to it, instead of other people’s opinion being the main source of what I write about.
Hopefully I’ll find my way around this and make it work for my next listicles.
takeaways
1. Today I learned that if we really want to build something that is fulfilling - for us to show up every single day, we have to operate from our place of truth; because this is where our inspiration flows more naturally.
2. Our voice and our point of views are the two things that make us different and makes the difference. It's essential to use them to present our creative work and to build connection to our audience. It represents our humanness and authenticity.
3. Acknowledging when we fail to follow our true north, knowing what really brings us joy and fulfillment, and learning what sits right within us, helps our authenticity to step into the light. Remember that what is authentic to us will always come forward if we only take the time to look inwards.
4. The more authentic we become, the further we can naturally draw the right people in, generate ideas, and navigate our creative direction and freedom.
final thoughts
I noticed that this blog took me just three days to finish (that’s fast for me) and how pumped I was to start writing as early as 6am (I think that’s a good sign) Resurfacing my true north is a refreshing moment, it was an incidental idea that led to self-discovery. It helped me realign myself with my truth and certainly fueled me to write this entry quite easily. I felt guided, comfortable and free.
I am grateful to receive these golden nuggets of learning along the way. There are definitely lessons that we can only learn by experience once we start doing (will talk more about this on a separate blog. OMG ideas are rushing in! Insert crying emoji).
On the other hand, I will still curate best-things-to-do-kind-of-blogs. I am yet to quit on listicle type of blogs and will still try and figure out how I can tweak it with what I learned today.
