I thought I came up with this idea (slow blogging) but after a Google search it turns out I didn't.
"I realized that the biggest thing holding me back from executing all of the exciting projects I had dreamt up (& truly growing my blog) was, in fact, making sure that my blog was on schedule." -Hoda Katebi, Joo Joo Azad
"There can be so much value in starting a conversation when you really have something interesting and/or useful/insightful to say, instead of just forcing yourself to keep up with daily content in the hopes of staying relevant and present...
"You don't work for your blog - your blog works for you and your goals, and the most important thing we can do is let it." -Jen Carrington
And even my favourite blogger, Elise, in her own way, is slow blogging right now, although she's not labelling it as such:
"Right now, I plan to update on occasion when I have something to say or something to share. It's funny - I blogged near daily for almost ten years. And when I took a break? I didn't miss it." -Elise Blaha Cripe.
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I started writing online in 2002. That's almost fifteen years ago... and it will be in December.
The online world looked a LOT different then. I remember coming across a blog called "Bluishorange" and being hooked, checking in every few days to read her posts about her life. She was just... writing. For the sake of it. There were no sales pages, no newsletter sign-ups, no free e-courses. Just... writing: Stories. Thoughts. (Mind you, this didn't seem weird, this non-sales-yness, because there wasn't the Internet of Today to compare it to.)
I loved blogs. I tried it out for myself. I kept it up and kept at it as the years passed and the Internet evolved. I switched from a purely personal blog to a blog with a mission (Dream Big Cape Breton) which I wrote for three years. Then I got real burnt out on it, and stopped.
Then I moved in to this new home on the Internet, this blog you're reading now. And I did so as a business, as Leah Noble Design. With ideas for how to blog as a business, but also with a long history of blogging from a personal place.
Cut to: today. Early 2016. Here I am, spending a lot of time thinking about my blog and what I want it to look like now. I still like writing, and being online, but I'm also sort of burnt out on the Internet in general. On the "sales-y" ness of it. I read this post by a gal named Michelle Gardella, recently, and it just hit home like an arrow:
We tell the kids to stop fidgeting, we tell our husbands to shift into the good light, and we sell. Oh boy, do we sell.
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So if I don't want my blog to be all sales-y (totally a term, by the way), what do I want?
I want my blog to be a place people can read my writing. To be a place they connect with me, and me with them. I want it to be a place potential clients check me out, see what I'm all about, get a sense of who I am. But I also want it to be a creative outlet for me. I want the stuff I share here to be good, to be something I'm proud of, not hastily put together on the run.
So, that brings me to "slow blogging." I had an 'a ha!' moment last week when I thought I invented the term, but then Google showed me the error of my ways, as Google often does.
But rather than blog once a week, as some of the people who have written about slow blogging suggest, I actually want to slow right down and get super realistic with myself. I want to blog once a month.
That's right. One post a month. Which, for someone who used to post daily, feels almost comical, like a slowed-down video where your voice gets all deep and weird.
But, whatever. This is what I want: I want to get a sketchbook, and I want to write and draw in it, maybe collage in it, maybe who knows what in it. And at the end of each month I'll share it. I'll share that month, "January," "February," et cetera.
And, that's it. For now. See ya back here in twenty days. (Or on Instagram if you can't wait that long, haha.)