What?! You’re Starting This Blog Thing…Again?!

Today’s Attire:   A navy off the shoulder cotton top (My Baby Jo $28) paired with a blue white and beige printed skirt (White House Black Market $35), Black calf length leather boots with studded hard ware (DSW $29) and denim jacket (Old Navy $15).

Outfit Justification: Today the division that I work for celebrated its one year anniversary. They were having a party. I wanted to be festive and by festive I wanted to wear something cute and comfortable. The skirt has pockets, so that fit the criteria.

What?! You’re Starting This Blog Thing…Again?!

Last week I was talking to one of the people in the office who I’ve recently had the opportunity to get to know a bit better.  She was telling me about how she was getting out of her comfort zone.  She had taken a one day comedy workshop and that prompted to her to sign up for a comedy writing class for late night television.  She has no comedy writing experience.  She just wanted to try it.  We talked about her first class. I enjoyed seeing that excitement as she talked about it.  And even though I don’t know her very well, I was super excited to see her step out and do something cool like this.  I wanted to encourage her as much as I possibly could.  I have multiple friends who are writers and I believe in their talent.  As a creative person I believe it’s my duty to encourage creative talent as much as possible.  As I chatted with my new work friend, I started to think about my blog. 

I remembered how the blog thing started.  Someone else was encouraging me to step out of my comfort zone and wanted me to bring my fashion thoughts, my storytelling ability and my life story to a larger audience.   After thinking about it forever I did it. And people liked it.  And it enriched my life.  It helped me document my journey with weight gain, weight loss, my love of karaoke, shopping, fashion, and eventually my pursuit of a music career.  When I started it, I thought it was this silly thing I was going to do.  But in the end people actually cared. They wanted to know what was going to happen in the next chapter of my crazy life.  It turned out to be much more than I expected.

Six years ago, one day in April my life turned upside down.  I was in a dark place physically and mentally and I pulled the plug on the blog.  I felt like I no longer had anything to say that would be of any interest to anyone, including myself.  I shut down completely.  It took me almost 8 months for me to get my life back together.  Once I got back to “normal” I still didn’t heart to start the blog again.

Then two years ago I decided to start the blog again. But it was a different blog.  The blog still had some of the aspects of the old blog, like my attire for the day, and the outfit justification.  But the subject matter changed.  It was a darker blog. It covered my battle with depression, weight gain, low self-esteem and my dread of turning 40.  There were lighter moments in the blog when I talked about the love of my life, my husband Jeff and the goofiness of our lives together.  I still talked about the pursuit of a singing career.  There was mention of audition failures and I didn’t have a steady gig. As I reread the blog posts, they felt too negative.  It was too real in some cases.  I don’t believe in spreading negativity. And I felt like it was becoming a vehicle that was spreading negativity.  I decided that I should shut it down.  In the last week of my thirties I opted to end the blog with a positive blog and how I had finally came into the acceptance stage of turning 40. I ended my 30’s and my blog.

There have been significant changes in my life since the last blog ended. I’m working at a different company. I have a steady singing gig which is completely out of my comfort zone in the world of burlesque.  I have found a love of vintage inspired clothing and have incorporated that into my personal style.  I’ve even been published as pinup model.  I still have some of the same struggles I had before, but there are all these positive new things in my life.  And when I was telling my new friend about the old blog, she said that it was fantastic and questioned why I stopped. She quickly said that I have such an interesting life and it’s a shame that I’m not sharing it with the world.  She said she’d totally be interested in hearing about the daily life of a person who works as a computer geek during the day but sings for a burlesque company in her spare time.  She also said that if she would be interested she thought others would be too. She even suggested we could write one together, me about pursuing music, her about pursuing comedy writing.  It wasn’t a bad idea.  I’m still toying with it.

So this is my attempt to dip my toe in the water of writing again.  I’m still afraid of what kind of scrutiny I could be opening myself up to.  I’m concerned that people might take shots at me.  People have always had very strong opinions, and sometimes people like to share their opinions of my life in a not so constructive way.  I have enough stress in my life, and I don’t want or need that kind of criticism. But that’s what happens when you open yourself up….on the Internet.  We’ll see how this goes. If it’s awful, I’ll stop. If it turns out to be awesome, I’ll continue.