Celebrating 2 Years and 100 Blog Posts
It’s fitting that this is my 100th blog post as I am celebrating two years of writing my Mama@Heart blog.
Growing up, writing was always a big part of me, whether it was creating short stories, poetry or adding an entry in my journal. There was something about putting the words in my mind on paper that brought me a sense of calmness and joy.
To this day, writing is still the one way I feel most comfortable expressing my thoughts, ideas and emotions. I’m known to be a talkative person, but I’ve never felt I could clearly convey what I truly want to say when speaking. Somehow, written words tend to come more easily to me.
My dream of wanting to be a writer was never a surprise to me. It was something that I knew I wanted from a young age and I remember thinking how much it made sense to me. It has been a frustrating journey. I can recall many times over the past 20 years since I really set out to achieve this dream that I thought to myself “why is this so hard to attain? All I want to do is write.” It took me a long time to learn that it’s not about waiting for your dream to come true, it’s about making your dream come true.
It’s only been two years that I’ve been blogging and I honestly don’t know why I didn’t start sooner. Well, actually, I do. It was self-doubt and being scared of failure. But what I’ve come to realize in the past two years of blogging is that success is what you make it.
Sure, I can agonize over analytics and the number of social media followers I have (and believe me, I have my moments of weakness when I do), but I didn’t start blogging to obsess over numbers. I’ve never been good with them anyway, hence the reason I was not a math genius in school. I started blogging because I love to write, plain and simple, and the fact that I’m still doing this two years later is a success in itself.
When I really think about it, I’m still quite the newbie in this world of blogging. There is still so much I want to learn. Heck, I’m still trying to sort out my exact focus for Mama@Heart. At its core, it is a mom blog and always will be. But it’s also been my journal, my therapy, my way of connecting with fellow moms trying to figure out this motherhood thing and my way of connecting with fellow parent bloggers trying to figure out this tight-knit, but rather large, blogging community.
Being a blogger is certainly fun, but there are challenges. There have been times that keeping up with writing a blog has felt overwhelming to me. I have spent many hours teaching myself the ins and outs of blogging, and I’m still learning. I have struggled with writer’s block. I want the content I produce to appeal to my audience, which is why I’m constantly in brainstorming mode trying think of fresh ideas. The quality of my writing is far more important to me than the number of blog posts I produce. I want to be real with my readers in what I share with them. As an avid blog reader myself, I love coming across posts that resonate with me and evoke emotion. My hope is that my writing strikes the same chord with those who read it.
And so as I mark my two year blog anniversary, I’m reflecting on the successes, big and small, that I have met so far, the goals I will continue to work toward and hopefully achieve, and make a promise to my audience that I will never lose sight of what brought Mama@Heart to life to begin with -- a passion for writing that stems from the very core of who I am.
