Clearing my Head

Lately I've been feeling very stressed out and unsure about things. My blogging has reached a turning point and it's taken me a while to figure out what's going on. Back in September when camp was done and I moved back into Tacoma, I was blogging full-time for the first time ever (not counting my Winne-trip, as I had saved up money and wasn't completely relying on blogging as my main income). I felt this pressure to make my blog really awesome. Put out super awesome content, blog every day or even multiple times a day, diversify my content and do more stuff like DIY's and recipes, etc. I felt like I could become a way "better" blogger, now that I had all the time in the world to blog since I was blogging full-time. I remember looking at blogs like A Beautiful Mess, From Me to You, Design*Sponge, and Calivintage for inspiration, and being really pumped up about blogging. I was having a lot of fun making little DIY projects and cooking new recipes. I was enjoying talking about the new season in my life involving wedding planning and newlywed life. But I couldn't maintain it. I'm not super-blogger. I'm just me. I'm just a girl who wishes she could afford to drive her Winne around the country more, who likes to ride her bike, who has Alaska flowing through her veins and loves adventure.

I feel like adventure can take many forms in our different seasons of life. For instance, right now I'm here in Tacoma living in a little house. I used to live at home with my family in Alaska, and then in a Winne on the road, and then in Tacoma, and then at camp. But right now I'm living in a little house, and I'm figuring out what this new season means for me. And there are growing pains along the way, as there has been in other seasons. I remember back in 2009 I had graduated college and moved back home to Alaska, and was wondering what to do with my life. I decided that going to grad school to pursue a fashion journalism degree made sense (I wrote a fashion blog and enjoyed writing... makes sense, right?), so I applied, got in, and started taking classes. And then I realized that I hate fashion journalism. I didn't want to pursue a career where I write catchy lines about the newest spring trends, or predicting what's going to be "in" next season. I realized I didn't actually like fashion all that much, at least not enough to make a career writing and reporting about it.. So I course corrected and started searching Craigslist for a 70's Winnebago Brave instead.

I feel like I'm at one of those course-correcting moments. I'm not Erin Hagstrom, I'm not Elsie Larson, I'm not Kaelah Beauregard, I'm not Rebecca Stice, I'm not Tieka Dierolf, I'm not Katie Shelton. And while I love all those ladies' blogs, my blog shouldn't look like theirs' because I don't look like them. I'm different, and making my blog the best it can be won't make it look more like theirs, it'll probably make it look less like theirs. I once read a quote by C.S. Lewis that said, "Good, as it ripens, becomes continually different, not only from evil, but from other good." Of course, I'm not saying that the blogs I love are evil, they are good! But my version of good will look totally different than their version of good.

I think I need to go into the wilderness and rediscover myself. Not the literal wilderness (well... maybe, actually), but I want to stop checking my bloglovin' reader for a while. I want to "fast" from reading blogs for a while. I've felt like I have to keep up with what everyone else is doing and, for me at least, it's an unsustainable standard. I'm going to stop reading blogs for a while and blog sans outward influence. I didn't realize how much I missed that kind of blogging. As hard as my new job has been, I feel like quitting the full-time blogger gig is way healthier than trying to do the rat race of blogging full time. For others it may not feel that way, but for me it did. It's funny because it seems like being able to blog full time is the goal for a lot of bloggers. Like, you know you've "made it" when you can quit your day job and blog full time. I'll admit it felt great that I could support myself and my husband through blogging, but as an important fellow once said... what good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?