Blogging isn’t something that comes naturally to me, I’m afraid. Big surprise. I often don’t feel like my life is interesting enough to write about, or that I have significantly valuable things to share with the greater web community. It feels like blogging just takes time away from DOing things.

But I’m wondering if maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way. What if writing about what I’m doing could be the motivator. Recording instances of progress, a change in thoughts or processes. The more I DO, the more I have the write about… Writing is just the break in between, the resting place for the project. An opportunity to consider next steps and think out loud, get feedback and interact with other artists.

This weekend, while I was visiting Chris at Dunn Brothers, I was working on various projects at my usual table. I had a handful of people walk up to me and start up a conversation about what I was doing. My projects ran the gamut, T-shirt deconstruction, bra alteration (for Burlesque, risque I know ), wire wrapping a crystal for my friend, working on illustrator tutorials and watching video tutorials on fire dancing. Both nights I gave my business card out to at least one person and I thought to myself “What good does this do? Even if they remember to look me up a day from now, I don’t have anything interesting on this damn site.” Admittedly, my blog is a hodge-podge, mish-mash of whatever seems to be going on when I start to feel guilty about not blogging enough. I probably spend more time on this blog complaining about not blogging than actually writing about the interesting things I have going on… *irony*

My biggest hiccups in blogging:

1. Pictures – Taking them, uploading them, editing them for the web, writing the blog and inserting them into the blog takes a good chunk of time. At any point I find myself easily distracted by something else on the internet.
2. Self-esteem –  Going back to the idea of not having anything to contribute, as it’s a fairly common fear I have across many aspects of my life. There are so many people out there that write beautifully, that are doing interesting things and take BEAUTIFUL pictures. The feeling of “how can I compare to that?” slaps me across the face when I think about wanting to blog again. I just need to remind myself that I don’t have to “compare” to that. My work is my own and putting it out there can really only help me.
3. Time – This site needs an overhaul. Which is something I’ve recently been working on gradually. Changing the layout, the navigation, categories, tags… I still have to take pictures of recent projects to add them to the Art sections, write overviews for The Wildcat Sanctuary, Travels and probably update my About page. Making myself spend at least 15 minutes a day on these tasks helps me to be a ninja about getting it done. I may not notice drastic changes right away, but it’s certainly improving week by week. I also need to tell myself that blogging doesn’t have to take an hour of my day everyday.

Some questions for those of you who blog:

1. What inspires you to blog?
2. What do you write about?
3. Do you have a schedule you adhere to or do you just write as things happen?
4. How much time do you spend on it?
5. What is your biggest challenge to overcome?

I’m just curious to know what other people are doing. Thanks for your input and for reading!

I’ll leave you with a recent project and hopefully I’ll get around to posting more about this soon

Rocky enjoying a drink