'm realizing in the last couple months how important it is to interact and connect with women who inspire me. Not just passively online, stalking inspiring people, but making real connections and having in-person conversations with those people. It gives me a jolt of energy and I feel my focus dial in. Having spent years being passively inspired by folks online, I've noticed it's definitely something different to have people who inspire me in my close vicinity who I can meet up with and bounce ideas off of. Online is great, but I'm often just left inspired, but without any sense of direction or focus. For some reason I just feel more scattered with online inspiration. I guess it could be because it's impersonal inspiration. Just general awesomeness, but the awesomeness doesn't know you, it doesn't talk back to you and say, "hey, you're great at this thing, have you thought of doing such and such?" It hasn't met you and assessed your strengths and weaknesses. This isn't to say that the internet's general awesomeness inspiration is bad, but the more I hang out with inspiring women in my local community, the more I feel focused.
It's easy to get lulled into the internet's siren song of endless, mindless inspiration. There are just so many amazing people out there doing awesome stuff. And that's great, but I'm learning that it doesn't always serve me well. The internet often makes me into a passive consumer, rather than an active creator and I ache to be the latter. The former leaves me feeling a little lethargic and, ironically, uninspired. I think there's a balance to be found between internet inspiration and IRL meetings with inspiring women, and I'm seeking it. My introversion often leaves me out of balance towards the internet end of things and it takes an active effort to seek the IRL, but it's something I'm trying to make a priority.
I feel like this is why everyone feels so infused with focus after going to blogger meet ups or conferences. You get to physically hang out with women who are inspiring, go to workshops and speakers, and learn, and when you go home you're full of ideas and action plans in a way that you really never get from online classes, or at least I haven't. There's something to be said about the energy and vibe that other people give off in person, and it's something that the internet just has a hard time capturing and delivering. I've been blogging for six years and it's often been too easy to get sucked into the endless scrolling of internet inspiration, going everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. At the beginning of the year I decided my word for the year would be "honest" or "genuine", but I think I'd like to shift that to "local focus." Not because I want the blog to focus on local issues or local stuff (though I do love Tacoma and think there are awesome things happening here), but because the only way I'll move forward and find the focus I need to do what I want, is to make those local relationships with people I can sit across from, over a cup of coffee, and talk.
