As you may know, besides this blog, Corey Stewart Online, I have a number of other blogs that I try to manage.
These blogs deal with topics such as songwriting, the music business, home recording and spirituality but with everything that has been going on in my life over the past six months or so, these blogs have not been getting the attention that they should.
I have been really wanting to start writing again but it has been a real struggle to do so of late because every time I come up with an idea for one of my blog posts whether it be of a personal nature or about songwriting, the music business, home recording or even spiritual topics such as meditation or buddhism itself, I immediately get stuck.
I get stuck because as soon as I start to write questions start flowing through my head such as…
- “Is what I’m writing about going to be on-topic for the blog I’m writing for?”
- “Is what I’m writing about relating to the last thing I wrote about?”
- “Am I jumping around topics too much?”
- “Am I relevant or important enough to share this information with the world?”
- “Is this idea going to be good enough to share?”
These questions, assumptions and statements that my inner voice shouts at me before putting pen to paper simply paralyses me and I get so exhausted from all of the overthinking.
Initially, I would let it go and think to myself that everything will be alright. I was confident that this was a temporary thing and that my writing flow would come back.
Except that it hasn’t.
Over and over again I would just keep talking myself out of starting but I think I may have come up with a solution to my problem.
It seems that in my attempt to separate all of the different facets of my life into different niche blogs, I have instead created the perfect environment to not write by paralysing my writing process through having too many blogs to write for.
Phew… So how do I remedy this?
Well, I think the answer is to distil all of my content into one blog (this one) and get rid of everything else.
I know this sounds drastic and it smacks of me doing my “wiping the slate clean and starting again” routine again but I don’t really know what else I can do.
Of course I’ll be saving all the content that I’ve already created/curated on my other blogs and will be drip feeding them into Corey Stewart Online. My hope is that by doing this will free myself to refocus on my writing.
The challenge now becomes finding a way to make all of the condensed content make sense within the Corey Stewart Online framework and I think the answer to the challenge lies with redefining what this site is.
I tried to do this very thing a few years ago but I got scared and separated everything again based on the assumption that not doing so would confuse the reader by having too many topics to read about on one blog.
This time, it will be different because I no longer care about Google algorithms and online marketing theories about niche blogs and monetising content. I just want to write again, get a flow happening and deal with all of the other stuff later.
I’m much more interested in reconnecting with people online, building a community, a tribe of people who “get me, my music and everything else in between” and I want to start re-examining my life again through documenting it online, Socrates style.
So, what happens next?
I will back up all of my content on my other blogs and then delete the sites and the social media attached to them.
After that I’ll transfer/repurpose the content onto Corey Stewart Online while at the same time, start writing new content with the knowledge that the only choice for publishing my thoughts, feelings, theories, rants and music is right here, right now.
I’m feeling excited and daunted all at the same time but at the end of the day my sanity, my sense of purpose and my creative flow will be the winners out of all this but that means that you dear reader will have a lot more things to consume.
Peace,
Corey 🙂