I once had an anonymous blog

Just over eleven years ago, I started my first real world job as an intern at an architecture firm in NYC. I had a few friends that worked at this firm, and on a whim I decided to apply for a job there (from my desk in the architecture school all the way in Mississippi). Without even a phone interview, I got the job and a salary offer of $30,000 a year.

I had made it! I felt so…abundant. And…like I was doing things. Impressive things. You know?

My year in NYC was the first time I really questioned what I wanted out of my life and my career. I started this job, in this high rise building, with all of my progressive and cool coworkers, in this cool city (“everything happens HERE”, I would boast), and I was making real grown-up money! But the realities of Adulting quickly seeped in and sidled right alongside my first credit card debt and the sinking feeling that “I don’t really want to be an architect.”

As much as I loved the people I worked with, I dreaded going to work every day, and I wondered if being full of dread from Sunday evening to Friday morning was just part of growing up.

So I spent my days at work bored and kinda miffed about it. I started quietly surfing the web in my down time and discovered blogs written by people from across the globe who spilled their guts about their careers and relationships. I was absolutely enthralled.

Eventually I started my own blog where I shared my own struggles (which were mostly limited to the dramatic relationship quandaries of a twenty-something). I wrote under a pseudonym and changed the names of all of my characters. I wrote in that blog nearly every day, sometimes twice a day, giving nearly unlimited details about my life to total strangers. And I continued writing it after leaving NYC and starting my next real job after I graduated college. I wrote for the pure catharsis of it, and it felt amazing to have a handful of followers who took an interest in my world. It was like free therapy.

I think that’s what blogging was to a lot of people back then. It was a way to share our passions and our challenges without worrying about burdening anyone who really didn’t care.

I eventually deleted the blog after meeting my husband and no longer feeling so tortured by my relationship woes. I didn’t know what to write about anymore, and I felt a little guilty about having this secret documentation of all my failed relationships.

I continued to read blogs for a long time. Eventually, blogging started to change. And — like most things that gain widespread popularity and a widespread audience — became an engine for driving traffic and business. The blogs that grew organically and had massive amounts of followers inspired others to try to monetize their passions and pseudo-passions via blogging. Blogging got really boring and became littered with ads and affiliate links. Then Google shut down their reader (why, Google, just WHYYYYYY?).

That was pretty much the end of reading blogs for fun for me.

Okay, so, what’s my point here?

Welp, I’m no longer an architect (once I got my license, I finally gave myself permission to blow that candy stand). And I started my own creative business a few years ago. It’s been quite the journey full of high highs and low lows.

Social media has nearly replaced blogging when it comes to sharing our lives and our work online. But just like blogging, social media has become so deeply monetized that it’s getting boring and super stressful from a business standpoint. There’s a Stepford-wife-ish formula to it. I don’t enjoy it anymore.

When I started using Instagram, it was fun. Then someone told me I took too many pictures of my dogs and I became obsessed with how to better entice my ideal customer. Seriously, what the hell?

(I was so into Periscope, too, until everybody started telling me how to monetize Periscope…)

And I find myself seeking success on these platforms, then feeling completely overwhelmed because I’m not trying to be Instagram famous, for crying out loud. But I start drinking the damn kool-aid every so often and the kool-aid tastes like crap, y’all.

I just want to share and sell my work to large groups of people so that I can afford to continue making the work that I love to create and share with others, without having to go back to my former career — that made me dread-filled every day — in order to pay the rent and take a friggin’ vacation every now and then.

So I’m left wondering: how do I share what I love (and loathe) with the world without getting caught up in the cogs of this machine, or giving up on it all together? Can I do this without the machine?

Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter…all of them and more? Don’t even really contribute to my bottom line. Like, at all. The things that bring me sales and new opportunities are in-person events, personal connection, word of mouth, and email. That’s so old-school! And so much more fulfilling than trying to make my Instagram profile grid cohesive.

All of these platforms (including blogging) were originally created to foster social connection. They’re being retrofitted for marketing purposes and most people don’t want to be marketed to.

I don’t want to be marketed to.

The exhilaration of discovery gets drowned out by the Formula. And the joy of expression gets trumped by the need to meet follower quotas and financial goals.

I’m yearning to tap back into the catharsis of expression — writing, creating. Ignoring the pressure of monetization, follower counts, post engagement, and feigned authenticity. But I’ll admit: I’m a little nervous to neglect the machine that I’ve been taught is so vital to my success as a business owner (and it’s not, I know this!).

What happens when I stop trying so hard to pay the bills and start creating and sharing for the pure joy of it again?

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