Only 8 blogs (or one and half years) ago, I wrote a blog titled ‘To Blog or Not to Blog’. It was about wanting to blog, but not knowing about what. Back then, I decided to blog about me getting back to my life after a burnout (and the depression that hadn’t hit yet then).
Turns out I’m really bad at writing about it.
But now I have the same dilemma; ‘to blog or not to blog’.
I’ve been wanting to get back to blogging for MONTHS, but at the same time, something keeps holding me back. Stress from work, not wanting any more pressure, my entire blog world has changed, I don’t know if I should write in Dutch or English, no one seems to do personal blogging anymore… There are plenty of reasons to debate if I want to blog again or not.
Journaling…or Blogging?
Last week, I was talking to someone about my mental health struggle in the current corona situation, and she suggested journaling. Now, journaling has never been my thing. I remember I had a diary when I was younger and I’d journal for a few days, and forget about it for months. Then I thought my previous entries were stupid, I’d rip out those pages, and start over. I ended up with an empty cover with a lock on it.
But blogging…It’s been my thing for more than half my life.
I started my first blog when I was 12, in 2004. Back then I mostly wrote about school and did some blog tags. But as I grew older and had more to say, my blog grew with me. Through high school and getting bullied, to my amazing exchange year in the USA, catching the travel bug, and all throughout being a student. It even became part of my daily life and job, as I’m a content marketer now.
As I was doing my final internship and started work in 2015, blogging became less. I was writing all day already and when I got home after work, I just wanted to sit down and do nothing productive. I started a Budapest blog when I moved to Budapest (but stopped blogging when I got a full-time job on top of my freelancing), I started a book blog during my burnout when I wanted to write about *something*, but stopped writing there after a while too, because I felt like ‘who really cares’ and it wasn’t enough of an outlet for me.
I had a job where I wrote blogs and emails all day long, but now that I’m on an indefinite unpaid leave of absence due to coronavirus, I’m not writing anymore. And I still have that personal blogging urge.
So here I am, giving it another go
For the past week, I’ve been working on my lay-out, in between doing some courses and applying for jobs. I’m almost happy with it now (for some reason I can’t get the sidebar to appear on pages and I haven’t figured out how to put the title and date above the featured image?) and I thought I should start by posting something.
I’m not promising daily or weekly updates, but I have a list of things that I want to write about. From lists of stuff that I’m grateful for and some mental health musings to personal updates about finding a new income, moving out of my mom’s house (again), and now that I’m home 24/7 without a job, I even started a project (more on that soon-ish here). And more, probably.
I think I’ll start with a personal update on how it’s going now, 11 months after my last blog!
If anybody is reading this, please go ahead and leave a comment with some of your favorite blogs to read (in English or Dutch!).
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