Everyone who is a blogger has a blogging story, right? The tale of how they began. Well, mine starts off over a year and a half ago…
We had just found out we were pregnant. Within a week or two of discovering the good news, Erik and I sat down and began to outline what kind of labor we wanted to have.
All-natural? Yes.
Doula? Yes.
Intermittent fetal monitoring? Yes.
Episiotomy? No.
The list went on and on.
We felt confident in our decisions, but there was one problem: Erik and I quickly discovered that not everyone else was supportive of those decisions. In fact, some people were very vocal in their disagreement, and we felt the need to surround ourselves with people who were supportive. So what did we do? We took to the internet. We joined the Mama Natural Birth Course, and it was one of the best decisions we made. It is an online birthing course with a private Facebook group. There we found a bunch of like-minded individuals. It was great!
Towards the end of the pregnancy, however, I found myself in a bind. Our online course was over. But my journey as a mother was just getting started. I was really feeling the need to reach out and connect with people. So I decided to start a blog. I hired someone to set a website up for me because I knew practically NOTHING about computers. Seriously. The extent of my computer usage at work is answering emails and writing things in Microsoft Word. When my website was first built, I decided to go with SquareSpace because it is intuitive and easy to update. The only problem was that no one ever came to visit the site. It also didn’t help that I was crazy busy with a baby and a job and never posted anything.
But then my husband went to London for a week…
Doesn’t that sound dangerous? What was he thinking? Lol! That first night alone I realized that I needed something to do once J had gone to sleep. So I began fooling around of the internet and somehow found myself reading about blogging again. It was dizzying. I know that everything I was reading that night was written in English, but I literally did not understand what any of the words were. SEO? Plug-In? Tailwind? It got really frustrated very quickly! But then, something happened. I reminded myself that I had wanted to blog, so I was going to blog! And I forced myself to keep reading. An hour or two later, I finally read something and actually comprehended it. I did a mental happy dance!
I have to say it was pretty exciting to force myself outside of my comfort zone and learn something so totally and completely new. If I were honest, I would have to say that the last time I was outside of my zone like that was in college. But the level of forced learning was pretty exhilarating, and that was it! I was bitten by the blogging bug.
So then I started reading everything I could about blogging. I found multiple bloggers’ income reports. They were very useful, not to mention, soooo motivating! Through income report reading, I learned about Abby Lawson’s Building a Framework and read it from (digital) cover to cover. It was so well-written, and incredibly easy to understand, even for someone like me.
It was then that I decided to redo my website, but this time, have it on wordpress.org. I bought a new domain name through GoDaddy, installed the Genesis framework along with a child theme, and signed up to have Flywheel serve as host. I was building a blog!
Who knew I was capable of this? I didn’t!
It remains the same. Every time I work on my blog, I learn something new. There have been many happy dances! It’s like some grand adventure that I get to go on every day without leaving my house. I have been bitten by the blogging bug as they like to say.
And I am glad that you are on this adventure with me, helping me learn and grow as a blogger. Thanks for being a part of the journey! But this is only the beginning. I am no expert on blog stuff. I am not going to pretend to be. But if you would like to grow and learn with me, fill out the subscription box below. Every time I write about blogging, you’ll be sent the post.
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Blogging has always sounded so scary to me. I feel you!! This is very inspiring, maybe I should start a blog too?! Love it! Thanks for the tips and I’m excited to read more of your posts!!
Jen, yes! You should totally start a blog! I was just reading somewhere that businesses have 92-94% more sales if they have a blog attached to them. So you should totally start a blog about being a doula.