So you may have noticed that I have not been blogging much over the past few years. Or maybe you didn’t. Doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that I find myself once again being drawn to putting some of my thoughts down on a page and out into the world.
This is scary… and it’s scary because the web has changed over the last few years.
When I started blogging back in 2012 there was a lot of us figuring it out as we went.
We experimented with things, many of them didn’t work, the world didn’t fall apart, and we continued on.
In the last few years it seems to have got a lot more professional.
It’s no longer ‘write something and put it in the world and see what response happens’, instead it’s keyword research, and influencers, and market research. It’s driven by data.
I suppose that’s necessary as there is so much more competition.
And I know that I have largely stopped reading blogs, newsletters, emails. Haven’t you?
Yet, there are a small handful of writers whose email I do open and read almost every time I come across it in my inbox.
And I ask myself why I read theirs.
And it’s because they have a small, authentic sounding voice. Even if they are marketing something, it’s subtle, but instead they are
sharing one thought about one thing.
Maybe it’s the brevity and the focus. Or because they have a unique voice. But they shine out of my inbox as being ‘genuine’ when so many other emails just aren’t.
And it’s this genuine quality that I find lacking in my archive of posts. In trying to figure out what I was doing, I was also trying on different personas and one of them was a kind of tough-talking marketing guru.
A ‘suck it up and do your marketing’ approach.
And like when you look back at old photos of yourself and think ‘what was I wearing?’ I read back these old posts and think ‘what was I doing?’
But fashions change, people change and blogs can change.
In the past few years, when I haven’t really been blogging, I’ve been a full-time academic, I ran a large musical theatre programme, and I’ve been working on a PhD about sustainability of creative careers.
I’ve also recently quit my job and my family has relocated back to Canada after living in the UK for almost 16 years.
So I think it’s fair to say that (a) I’ve been quite busy (b) my thinking has changed and moved on from these experiences (c) that I’m still trying to make sense of the last couple of years.
I’m giving you a heads up that I’ll probably use this blog as a way to make sense of those years and how they have changed my thinking and my approach to being a creative in the world.
And I’m going to try and be brief because you’re busy and I’m busy, so let’s cut to the chase.
It feels good to be back.
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