Today is the day after Labor Day, which in my day, was always the first day of the new school year. Coincidently, it is my first day of self-employment.
It is now 6:30am, and traditionally, right about now, I’d be getting ready to go to work after a long weekend. But today I sit here at my desk, typing away for a few minutes before tackling my to-do list. Somehow I thought being my own boss would mean more time to do the things I want to do, but instead, it means scrambling to do twice as much. No work = no money. Funny how that working thing works. It’s not like graphic design is saving lives, but it pays my bills and feeds the cat. And you don’t want to be around my cat when she is hungry. It ain’t pretty.
As with all new beginnings, some things change. A lot of things are going to change. One of them is this blog. I’ll tell you something: two years ago I made the decision to make things around here a little less personal, because 1. It really sucked to get negative feedback on stuff I made or thought or said that came from a personal place, and 2. I got some bad advice from someone who told me I would attract more readers if I catered my content to appeal to the lowest common-denomiator.
Lessons on that: 1. People who are the most anxious to give advice are usually the least qualified to give it, and 2. Who the hell cares?
What have a learned from filtering out 95% of my personal opinions and experience?
I would rather have someone read a post that came from my heart and dislike it, and tell me they dislike it, rather than get lots of clicks and page views on someone thing I didn’t give a rip about in the first place. The way I see it, y’all can choose from 10,000 blogs to read every single day, literally, so I have to trust there is a reason you are here. And as much as I would love your readership, I would rather have your trust in return. Even if that means that you don’t like what you see and that means you won’t come back. This is a 100% selfish move on my part. It’s part of my effort to invest in myself in these early days of new business. In short: I need to do what is right by me. Even if that means talking about me in some crazy long-winded blog post. Like this.
As I sit here at my desk, alone, I realize I am not going to be seeing other people on a daily basis like I used to, and I suspect that means I will become much more reliant on my online relationships with other people. That means you. Typing that out might make me the girlfriend who says I LOVE YOU too soon, but I said it. It’s there. No take backs.
So I guess what I am saying here is that I hope to see you more often, but what I hope you see is a closer reflection of me; messy and sparkly, riddled with typos and cat hair. Less agenda, more honesty. There will still be some ads and some sponsored posts. I’m still hoping that this holds out as a steady source of side income (-see, that’s me with the honesty there). Pretty much the same as always, and you might not even notice any change, but, I already notice a change in my attitude. My intentions. My enthusiasm. This all might be a massive failure, but it will be mine, and that is exciting. Part of me really wants to twirl around really fast and leap up a cliff ala Wonder Woman, but my ass is too big for the outfit. So I’ll settle for a morning at my new desk with a cinnamon bun and a really impressive hair flip.
Here is to new beginnings. Now let’s watch Lynda Carter twirl for all of us!