Hello,

Don’t get me wrong, I really love my little blog – I haven’t committed to anything for this long probably ever, maybe the dance classes my parents paid for before I went to uni. But the inspiration is low, even though I’m only writing one post a week instead of the two I managed for most of last year.

Every time I think of something I could write about – how I’m adjusting my routine to spend more time on basic self care, my experience with mental health and body image at the moment or even how I turned being the burnt out bright kid who didn’t finish any of her A Level English Literature texts to reading 45 books in a year, but it all feels so fake. Who am I to write about any of those things as if I am in a position of authority? I have no advanced experience in anything to share or educate with anyone and I’d be writing for the sake of it.

Which is exactly what I’m doing now… But we’ll gloss over that one for now.

Part of me thinks it’s imposter syndrome – who am I to think anyone should listen to or read anything I have to say about anything? But then I think that thinking it’s imposter syndrome is pretentious because assigning that term to myself implies that I believe I really am an authority on any of those things and I’m just having a moment of self doubt. Can it be imposter syndrome when I’m just right in that I’m not qualified to write about anything and I should stop writing a blog as if I’m important enough or knowledgable enough for someone to read it.

I’m really proud of the fact that over the last couple of years, I’ve stopped trying to ‘commercialise’ my blog – I did my time using trending hashtags and posting every couple of hours about my latest content and trying to be an influencer. I’ve stopped sharing my content as much, I don’t put my social links at the bottom of blog posts anymore because I write the things I want to look back on and if there is anyone else reading my posts, I’d rather they engaged with the content than followed me on Instagram.

I love writing – getting this all out has felt really nice and sitting with my laptop and just typing is a comforting feeling. Like when I’m creative writing and I’m working on idea or a moment and the story is almost telling itself – there’s several moments where I’ve been writing and I’ve almost been surprised by the words on the page because it almost feels like I’m not writing them, or the characters have started building a relationship I didn’t intend for and it just makes sense. I love that feeling.

I think I’m tired and burnt out. I think a full time 40 hour work week is too much for my neurodivergent brain, so piling on dance classes three nights a week, wedding planning, maintaining the bare minimum of a social life and desperately trying to make lifestyle changes to lose weight isn’t really helpful. There isn’t a solution at the moment, just hoping for a full nights sleep and a better week next week.

But the blog block is real – I now plan for roughly four posts a month; the last of each month is my reading wrap up and the first is my monthly goals and whilst I prefer the idea of keeping the middle two to be less structured, maybe I need themes and guides to take out the element of decision making that comes with not knowing what to blog about.

My two most popular blog posts are ‘there’s no songs about turning 24‘ and a creative writing piece called ‘if you had three wishes, what would they be?‘ and I can’t explain why they’re still consistently my two best performing posts when they were written two and five years ago respectively. But they’re examples of two more things I really love writing – personal rambles and creative writing. Maybe my four monthly posts could be my goals, creative writing, a personal ramble life update sorta thing and then a reading wrap up.

It’s my blog, it’s always been for me, I’m lucky if I get a few hundred views per month, let alone per post, which leads me back to ‘why am I writing this’ and ‘nobody cares’.

I don’t know why I’m writing this, and I don’t know if anybody cares. But I know I’m not the only one who feels like this, even if I don’t really see anyone else talking about it. And I do like the idea of saying things that others won’t, no matter how vulnerable it makes me feel.

Thank you for reading if you are, I hope you don’t mind my content ideas,

Sophie xx