It truly is amazing how when God closes a door, He always does open a window.
I lost my “job” at the LootCrate blog last month after I lost my temper with the EIC and made the grave mistake of confronting her on it in the staff chat. Not my finest moment. I don’t regret what I said, but I whole-heartedly regret how or where I approached her. In the end, we both decided it was time for me to go, and to be honest, I’m surprised she hadn’t booted me sooner than that for not producing.
I had said that my responsibilities at my job were keeping me from writing as frequently as was needed on TDC, and that was partially true. After my promotion near the end of the year last year, my responsibilities and required writing output nearly tripled. If I was getting paid at TDC, I would have made more of an effort to contribute, but seeing as I was not, I focused my time on work, my SEO business, and my pet project at StrategyGuideReviews.com.
But as I said, that was only partially part of the problem. The real key was that I stopped having fun writing there awhile back, and I could not pinpoint why. I’m not sure if it was because of the pressure I felt to produce for practically nothing outside of a free LootCrate subscription, I didn’t like what I was writing about, something else entirely that I’m still not aware of, or a combination.
After I was cut loose, I felt nothing but relief. I was going to miss chatting with those people on a daily basis, but the pressure was gone. And then a weird thing happened; I felt the need to write about what I was writing there somewhere else.
My great friend Jen Bosier and I a couple of years ago started a website for reviewing video game soundtracks, art books, novels, comics, and the like, but we had to shut it down when she got a real job writing about these topics somewhere else. That job is long gone, and she’s no longer with a video game site at all, so we talked about building another one. Two weeks ago, GamingCanon.com was born. I’m back to writing reviews for soundtracks (they were going nowhere on AT), novels, art books, and comics, but without all of the pressure because this is for me and something I want to do.
On top of that, I decided to commit to another idea Jen and I had last year, where we write an “anti-mommyblog” of sorts where we admit we aren’t perfect and bare some of our parenting lowpoints to the world. Instead of promoting products and showing how to pack diaper bags or create that perfect bento box for your child, we talk about all the things we do that we’re sure are taboo in modern parenting. It’s a celebration of doing the best you can, and damn the pressure of what everyone says you “have” to do. We’ve written one post each, and both posts have been so well received! Most importantly, my one post was super fun to write, and I have ideas for others. I hope we both keep with it.
So I’ve dropped one blog and started two others. Totally seems like me, doesn’t it? At least I’m getting more help with staff on SGR, and I’m going to force myself to do with my SEO business that I always tell my clients to do: BLOG. So that’s what, three blogs to replace that one?
I really think I’ll be able to keep up with these for one main reason: I’m doing all of these for me or my business. It’s so much more fun to write when you enjoy what you write about and you only have the pressure you put on yourself. I enjoyed my time at The Daily Crate, but it was time for me to go.
If nothing else, four of my favorite things I’ve ever written are from that blog:
Change is always hard. Stagnation is much worse. Hooray for occasionally scaring oneself into change
Well, not as much forcing myself to change as it’s overcoming my big mouth once again. 🙂