Falling for the dream of blogging

Have you ever felt like really wanting to do something but then not following through? I have been that person a lot, and also with this blog.

Having a blog is an idea that had a great appeal to me for a long time. When I think of blogging I connect that with having my own space online, sharing my ideas and creative outputs, connecting with people on what I care about and freely expressing myself and it feels like something I would definitely like to have.
So one day I decided that I would just give it a go. I set everything up and put things up there that I already had written. But since then I’ve only been periodically publishing posts here. Ideas would come to me fairly frequently but I didn’t follow up with it which was quite a frustrating pattern. I generally experienced quite some resistance to investing into my blog.

Why was I so attracted to the idea of having a blog? And why then not put it into practise?

The answer to the first question is really individual but for the second there’s probably a common pattern for a fair share of people. Apparently, despite the passion or excitement we feel for a subject something internally stops us from putting things into practise. Which left me feeling confused and frustrated. So I got curious and went down that rabbit hole to try and figure out what was going on.
What I found was in short that dreaming about doing something is easier and safer for me than actually doing it.

Just dreaming about something means that you don’t need to invest anything else than your imagination, so no need to invest time, energy, courage, ressources, money etc. Also there’s no risk of failure or mistakes, so it’s pretty safe from a psychological point of view. You can also imagine you already know all that you need what for you want to do. And dreaming will still satisfy your desire to explore this to a certain degree and will allow expression for the passion you feel. But in the end it still felt hollow and dissatisfying for me as I wasn’t getting anyone else or the real world involved, it was just all in my head and that doesn’t create the same energetic response as interacting with the real world.

This comes with a high risk of getting lost in fantasy and developing unrealistic ideas about what you want to do. For example I would imagine to have an idea and turn it into a blog post but omit all the time and effort to sit down, write, edit, and publish the post. It would also omit facing insecurities and anxiety that are likely to come up during that. So for me, just dreaming is a safe place, where appealing ideas easily become somewhat real and accessible. But honestly in the end you are creating an illusion for yourself, one that will make it even harder to face the reality because it is so different.

But how to stop dreaming and start doing?

I’m trying a few things and hope they help some of you too. I tried to get real about what I was trying to do and shred some of those dream ideas of how easy and flowing things might be. Chances for me and blogging are high that it will take consistent effort and time to write and publish posts, that I still have a lot to learn, that there are a lot of insecurities to face and that I will not get things perfect or might need more editing rounds than experienced bloggers. Building a blog takes time and decidication, it’s nothing that just happens. I have sometimes have this hope that some things will just magically work out one day, and well it never happens, and I’m sure I’m not alone with this idea. So, letting go this hope and also of perfectionism is important. Learning a new craft will mean not getting things right at first.

On the other hand there are plenty of nice things that you get from doing instead of dreaming:

• support, validation and appreciation from friends, family, people who pursue the same thing as you do
• learning, skill building and with that the small wins, satisfaction and pride of getting something new right
• new possibilities as you connect with other people and they contribute their own perspective and ideas
• real world output and something actual to show
• courage and resilience building
  

Both of the above helped me to get a more accurate perception of what my blogging exploration was going to look like. Another mental framing that helps me as well is to see blogging as a way to show up for myself. I might make a whole other article about that but in short it’s about respecting who you are, what you want and to show up with the commitment to make that happen.

So in the end, doing is scary, difficult and confusing but I firmly believe it is the more rewarding path in the long run. May you be blessed with the courage to start doing on your own path and may you never forget that you have the strength to follow your dreams even when it’s difficult and scary.
What are you dreaming of but never started doing?