I have some very exciting new to share. In case my two or three readers haven’t noticed yet, I added a subscribe button to this blog!!! Yes, this is a very thrilling development for me in my blogging journey. From the time I started this blog, I envisioned a forum that might grow with time. There would be comments and conversations. I would find my voice and listen to the voices of others. I would connect with people near and far. I might even start a blogging business and make some money as a side gig.
There are two hurdles that have kept me from even beginning to achieve these goals. First, I have to create regular content. So I have to show up. Consistently. Not the easiest task for a procrastinator-type like myself. Second, I have to overcome my fear of technology. This latter hurdle is the one that kept me from even starting a blog for so many years. It just felt too hard to figure out all the technical details needed to get a blog off the ground. I am just not tech savvy, I would tell myself. I don’t have time to learn all this stuff. It’s too complex. When I mentioned this a while back to a friend who asked me why I hadn’t started blogging yet, she acted like I was crazy. “Just hire some high school or college kid to do the tech stuff for you”, she told me. “This stuff comes easy for them.” No big deal. But to me it was a big deal. If I was going to start a blog, I wanted to do it ALL myself. At least at the beginning. I wanted to know how every part works so that if there’s an issue, I would know how to handle it. Maybe that’s the control freak in me. I am all for delegating, but I felt like if this was something that might evolve into an actual business some day, then I want to be a hands on entrepreneur. I want to be someone who knows how everything works before I outsource any of it.
I finally decided to start a blog many months ago after checking out several books from the library about WordPress and blogging. I listened to podcasts and read other people’s blogs about blogging. They made it sound so easy. So I took the plunge. I wrote some posts and I published them online. But for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to make the blog look the way I wanted. I kept changing templates trying to make it look better. I tried to add a picture to my main page. I tried to change the colors. I couldn’t figure out how to change my blogging name to show up on the posts. I couldn’t figure out how to create an avatar or add pictures to my posts. I couldn’t figure out how to create a separate non-gmail email where I could build an email list. And I couldn’t figure out how to add in a subscribe button to get that list growing … until NOW! I can’t tell you how many hours I have spent just trying to log in to my email service provider. I know this might sound ridiculous to some of you more techie folks out there, but for me this was crazy hard.
So yes, this is very exciting news from someone who considers herself technologically challenged. I now know that if I can do it, truly anyone can. I also know that no matter how difficult it seems, the most important thing is to never give up. Everywhere I looked I saw these beautiful blogs with tons of engagement. I should be able to do this, I thought. It shouldn’t be that hard. But for me it was hard and continues to be. I wanted to give up SO many times. But I keep telling myself that I can do hard things. The more effort it takes me, the more I will get out of it in the end. I know that for sure now, because even though I have yet to have a single subscriber, the fact that it is even possible for someone to subscribe to something I created brings such joy to my heart and a sense of confidence in my persistence. It means I can do anything I set my mind to and that is a feeling like no other.
What obstacles have you overcome recently?
