I don’t know if it’s the stress of final year, the pressure of this dissertation or the fact that I’ve been sat in this coffee shop for the past six hours and being very close to putting my head through the window (or lack of Diet Coke for five weeks) but at the minute, I would love nothing more than to pack it in, give up and close the whole thing off as a bad job.
The same goes for my blog. Why shouldn’t I just give it up? Why am I wasting so much of my time and energy on it? What if I get a really bad grade in my final year? Will it be my blog’s fault? My need to go out partying every weekend? My ‘work smart not hard’ mentality that I’ve adopted? Or a combination of all three?
I’m at the final hurdle now, my dissertation is due in just over two weeks and my exam is close behind. Then it’s all over and out into the real world. And that’s another big ball of stress on its own. All of this stress and pressure can get too much and a lot of the time, I feel like just giving up on it all and hiding under my duvet for the foreseeable.
But what’s life without its challenges and it may be a hugely stressful time, but this is when it’s time to step up. What doesn’t challenge you, won’t change you and the only person I need to do it for is myself. I owe it to myself to see it through. If I can get through my A Level year I can get through anything.
But what about the blog? It takes up 80% of my time – but why? Why am I writing, what am I gaining from it, who am I benefiting and more importantly, what is the point?? I’ve written a blog post before about blogging and whether it’s worth the time invested, but I want to think about whether it’s worth the energy invested; the planning, the writing, the researching, the social media management, the stress, the pressure, the financial investment and the missing out on life outside blogging.
What else would I do?
If I gave up blogging, I’d have to find a new hobby because I spend the majority of my time on this website. I have a sense of purpose when it comes to my blog. I write about my experiences, give advice and stop my mind from combusting by getting my thoughts and opinions out on here, by typing them out.
If I didn’t have this blog I would probably have watched everything available on Netflix and have moved onto Sky Go, be less motivated as a person and wouldn’t have had anywhere near the amount of experiences that this blog was able to give me. I guess I could have taken up a sport – but let’s not pretend that that would have happened.
When I start to feel like my blog is going nowhere and it’s all been for nothing, I have a look through a folder on my laptop that contains screenshots of every kind tweet, comment, DM and email I’ve ever received about my blog. It picks me back up and reminds me why I do what I do. My blog is here to help people and knowing that I’ve helped even just the people that message me to say so, reminds me why I blog and why I should keep going.
An online memoir
My blog is a way of looking back at who I was when I first started and seeing how I’ve changed and how far I’ve come. I can look back on my second year, going through the motions of finding a placement, leaving Liverpool and then look at my incredible year in London and know that I’ll always have those memories because I wrote them down and shared them. In another years’ time I’ll be able to look back at this and see how stressed I was and hopefully be able to laugh at myself for being so worked up about the future.
I’m not the same person I was when I started this blog and I’ll not be the same person in another few years’ time. I get to watch myself evolve, my writing improve and my overall blog improve with time – if I choose to stick at it.
Plus I’ll thank myself for all of this content when it comes the time to write my book. (Kidding).
The pressures of blogging
When it comes to the pressures of blogging, I mean the pressure that I choose to put on myself. Because I believe that when I do something, I need to try to be the best at it – otherwise, what’s the point in doing it? – it adds a whole lot of pressure to that something.
My blogging inspirations are the likes of Career Girl Daily, The Everygirl and PR Couture – that’s what I hope this website turns out to be someday. But I need to realise that these sites are not individual blogs, they are ran by a team of people; a village. My site is ran by a village of one – me. But this is the level I aspire to be at someday, and want people to come to my site and want to read all of the articles available, just like I feel when I visit the sites mentioned above.
I put pressure on myself to put out three pieces of content every week. When I start this, I have to keep it up, otherwise I’m letting myself down. I put pressure on myself to keep on top of all social media pages, posting on Instagram every day, getting involved on Twitter and reading other blogs, posting to LinkedIn, spending fifteen minutes on Pinterest every day and keeping my Facebook page somewhat active.
Blogging is basically a full-time job and I love it. I put this pressure on myself because there is no one else forcing me to do this and I know in the future I’ll thank myself for it. I hope.
Should I make my private life so public?
Another huge pressure that comes with this blog is being public about my next career move. At the moment, I have nothing in place for after graduation, and right now that’s fine because I’m still in university. But because my placement year was so amazing and glamorous, in my head, I’m thinking that everyone will be expecting me to come out of university with a stellar job, or for me to be head-hunted or to be whisked off to work for the Queen.
But what if I end up back at my waitressing job in Ireland? Will I be a failure? A fraud? ‘Ha, the “UK’s Best PR Student Blogger” couldn’t get a job out of university, what a joke.’
Before you roll your eyes, I know that probably no one gives a crap about my job when I leave university, but in my head, everyone cares. And this is why I put so much pressure on myself and get stressed and start freaking out about the future.
I need to learn to stop caring about what other people think, because at the end of the day, the only person’s thoughts and opinions that matter are my own and as long as I’m happy with whatever I’m doing and wherever I am after university, that’s the most important thing.
Will I be giving up my blog?
Fat chance. Even though I put a lot of pressure on myself, I love my blog and I love writing, creating and thinking of new ideas for it and imagining what I can do with it in the future. Blogging isn’t a job for me, nor is it something I don’t enjoy doing. If it got to the stage where I started to dread writing content for it or just lacked enthusiasm for it, then yes I might consider giving it up.
But for now, I’m sorry to say this blog isn’t going anywhere and neither am I.
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