What's in a blog?

For the past year I've been subcontracting to private midwives, so essentially run my own business, and I wanted to add in a creative aspect to that to increase my reputation as a midwife, satisfy the creative itch and better serve the birthing community. I started wondering what that might look like and experimenting with a few ideas - blogging, instagramming, belly casting. In choosing a direction to go in, I started listening to Jen Carrington and Sara Tasker's Letters From A Hopeful Creative podcast, and in doing so, came to quite a few lightbulb moments for incorporating a creative aspect into my midwifery work, as well as for this blog.

8 years ago when I started my first blog, Little Foal,  blogging as a business didn't exist. Bloggers were just creative people who talked from the heart about things they loved and what was happening in their lives. Blogger templates were about the only templates you could get, everyone did blog hops and guest posts and built up a community, and some very real, deep and authentic friendships came out of that time in my life. I was still blogging when blogs became profitable. I've watched as some of my friends have risen up in the world of blogging and created whole careers out of social media, sponsored posts and their "little" voice on the internet, and I am so happy for them!

I started being offered sponsored posts a couple of years into blogging, and I took on the work for a while and relished in earning money from this beautiful, creative outlet I had started as a hobby in a difficult time in my life. Pretty soon though, the hobby began to feel like a chore, and I got too caught up in comparing myself to other people and lost sight of where the joy was in putting my voice out into the world. I decided to step away from my blog at that point, and it was probably the best decision I could have made at the time. A lot of my friends did the same. The blogging landscape was changing and I was embarking on my career as a midwife. I focused my energy there, and it paid off. I have an amazing job, which I really love, and I couldn't have put as much focus and dedication into my midwifery journey if I was still caught up in blogging, and the unhealthy cycle of comparison I was in at the time.

For a while now though, I've felt as though a creative outlet was missing in my life. I crochet, embroider, sew, macrame, paint and work creatively with any medium I can get my hands on, but writing is a huge part of my creative identity that I haven't been giving a voice to lately. I'm writing a bit of fiction, but at the time that I started this blog, I hadn't put anything out into the world for a long time. I started this blog out with an outfit post, and intention of just sharing my life, my outfits, my food and my craft like I did in "the good old days", but then I felt the pull to write about my journey as a midwife - arguably the biggest journey I've embarked on in my life, and a piece of content that I felt could really serve others, as well. Since writing my "Graduate Road Less Travelled" series (in which there will definitely be a new instalment soon, exploring my journey one year on), I have ummed and ahhed, tossed and turned over the kind of writing I want to put out into the world on this blog. Do I want to write about being a midwife? About fashion? About coastal living? Do I want to share information with women to help them in their fertility, pregnancy and postpartum journeys? What about sharing recipes? I love to cook! DIY projects? Tutorials? Right before I stopped blogging last time, I struggled with the same problem. At the time, there was a real push in blogging to "find your niche", to be an expert in one field, or one type of writing, and to create a "brand" that was very specific, and dare-I-say, pigeonholed bloggers into sharing just one facet of their lives.

As a creative jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, this did not work for me. I can not pigeonhole my creativity. I'm not a one dimensional person, and I didn't feel like there was space for me to be all that I am and all that I feel on the internet, which was becoming increasingly uniform in my eyes. The pressure started mounting when I tossed and turned over what direction I want this blog to go in. I had a creative itch and I needed to scratch it, but i was holding myself back with all this thinking and worrying over what topic to write about and how to fit the many facets of myself into one blog. Then I heard Sara and Jen's podcast on just this topic - To Niche Or Not To Niche? and it was honestly like a weight lifted off my shoulders! This blog isn't a business for me, it's a creative hobby, but regardless of whether it's a business or a hobby, it's mine and it's a reflection of my creativity! Creativity doesn't need to fit neatly into a box - the fact that it doesn't is exactly what inherently makes it creative! There is space here on this blog for all aspects of my life, and whether or not anyone reads it doesn't really matter. Those who do will stick around regardless of the variety of topics I choose to write about, because they're here for who I am, which is injected into every bit of writing that I do, published or unpublished, and that is something pretty wonderful!