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Somedays getting the words out just right is hard. I don’t have a secret method for that. It is all about showing up every single day and just doing it. Action. It is all about the action.
When I started blogging, I didn’t think about talking to other bloggers. It was just me, writing the words that were pouring out of me. I wasn’t thinking about SEO, guest blogging or even building relationships with other bloggers. It was just putting myself on paper. I honestly, didn’t even care if anyone was reading it. It was therapeutic. It was healing. It was a way for my caged voice to finally escape the confines of the bars.
I was lonely but a different kind of lonely.
Lonely because I didn’t think anyone understood me. Lonely because I thought that I was the only one who had gone through what I had gone through. Lonely because the words I was writing were painful, true and felt like a curse.
Being lonely is something that other bloggers don’t talk about.
DECIDING TO STEP INTO MY LONELINESS OR MOVE PAST IT
I thought maybe that being lonely just came with being a blogger. I had kept myself isolated through my days as a beginner blogger. I didn’t want to make a fuss. I didn’t want to get noticed. I wanted to stay safe in my bubble and continue writing the truths that were coming out.
What I didn’t realize was that there was a world full of other bloggers who were also lonely. Staring at their computers, writing their truths but wishing that someone would reach out to them. That someone would say, hey I get you. It was like being a victim all over again. I wanted someone to reach out but I didn’t want to be the person who did it first.
I used loneliness as an advantage to myself. It solidified my depression. It made me feel sad more times than happy. It made me question if I should be writing the blog at all even though, most days, that was the best therapy I had. That is when I had to decide whether to step into my loneliness and stay there or throw it off to the side and move on.
DIFFERENT STAGES OF BLOGGING LONELINESS
Oh yes, there are different stages of blogging loneliness. These are the stages that I have personally experienced and have grown through.
STAGE ONE: Thinking that I am the only one who can write about and understand what I am going through. I started off as a mental health blogger. It was all about sharing my journey. It wasn’t that I thought I was special. I thought that no one would understand my journey. I thought that all other bloggers wouldn’t understand what I was writing about or why I was writing about it. So I stayed to myself.
I didn’t reach out to other mental health bloggers. I kept my head down and continued to blog. The loneliness came quickly. No one can understand you like another blogger in the same niche as yours. I didn’t give myself that opportunity. I kept myself locked away from others. Maybe it was fear. Fear of judgement. Fear of acknowledgement. Fear of ridicule. Fear of being told that someone else understood.
My armour of, no one knows what it is like, kept me safe for many years and maybe I just wasn’t ready to give that up yet.
STAGE TWO: Staying in two blog niches for longer than I should have. For a long time, I blogged in the mental health niche and the blogging niche at the same time and on the same site. It was the 2 biggest pieces of me and I just couldn’t separate them. I even went on a podcast and I was told that I needed to separate these two halves of me to keep moving forward.
But that little voice popped into my head, telling me that I couldn’t separate myself like that. Fear had won and I continued to fill the two roles. Struggling with both and feeling like more of a failure as each day had passed.
This loneliness was made up of thinking that I wasn’t good enough to do one or the other. By getting rid of one, I was less of a blogger than when I started. I was less of a person and didn’t deserve to blog in either.
The inner dialogue can be brutal and I was allowing it to tell me lies every single day. So I continued to do both types of blogging while inside I was feeling like I was slowly reopening all the old wounds that had scabbed over.
STAGE THREE: Changing blogging niches. I had finally made the decision to switch to the blogging niche. By this time, I had been a guest blogger on multiple other blogs talking about my story. People knew me as a mental health blogger. My name, Samantha Laycock, was known for self-love and self-care. And then I walked away.
The loneliness is stage three was all about no one knowing who I was anymore. I had built up my name in the self-care niche that people finally were getting to know me. They knew my story. I had inspired them in their lives.
I knew deep down that there was more that I needed to do. Just blogging about my experiences wasn’t enough anymore. I had stopped listening to that little voice that told me that I wasn’t good enough and I took the next big leap forward.
The scariest leap that I had ever taken. At this point, I had been blogging for 5 years and I knew what I was doing. I had learned the ins and outs of blogging. Friends were messaging me, asking me questions about starting a blog and everything blogging related. This was my chance to move forward in a big way.
I became a blogging blogger 100%. I changed my website over a weekend. I changed my branding and took on a brand new role in my business. When the dust settled, that little voice came back and it wasn’t so little anymore.
It reminded me that I made a mistake. That I didn’t know what I was doing. Who was I to teach other women to blog? No one was going to come to me because Samantha Laycock was a nobody in the blogging world.
She was a nobody.
You want to talk about shattering loneliness. That is shattering loneliness. When you realize that you are now a nobody in a blogging niche that is filled with big and popular names. Samantha Laycock Blogging was minuscule and nothing worth watching. There are days that I still validate this belief.
STAGE FOUR: Feeling less than adequate in my new blogging niche. Big names are in the blogging niche. Loneliness in stage four was all about comparison. Comparing my services, my knowledge and even my passion to those other blogging bloggers. I know, how do you actually compare passion when you don’t know them? But I did it and there are moments that I still do it.
Stage four loneliness was all about not being enough. Thinking that I wasn’t good enough and that I couldn’t compare to those who have been doing this longer than me. Not even a fair comparison honestly, but that doesn’t matter. It is still the thoughts and the feelings that come up as I continue on this journey.
STAGE FIVE: Growing in my blogging niche. I know this seems silly to admit but I had bouts of loneliness when I realized that I am great at what I am doing. I thought that people would think differently of me. I thought that this success wouldn't last. 2020 for me was my best year in business. (Watch for the upcoming blog post.)
The loneliness was different in stage five than in any other stage. It wasn't as strong and it didn't have as much of a hold but there were days that it came out and stopped me in my tracks. It was more of a...
who do you think you are? You don't deserve this. You don't deserve to get the clients that you are getting. You don't deserve to be successful by doing what you love.
And that loneliness can be devastating. It knocked me down multiple times. It had me shut out the people that I needed. It had me shut out the clients on certain weeks. It was when I realized that, I do deserve all of this. I am great at what I do and I will keep moving forward.
I NEEDED A SOLUTION TO THE BLOGGING LONELINESS
I needed a way to break up with this blogging loneliness for good. A way to say that it no longer has power over me. As I was thinking of ways to work with my previous clients and how I could bring them all together, the word, mastermind came into my mind. I wanted to create a way for bloggers to come together, work together, bounce ideas off each other and have a safe place to dismantle the idea of blogging loneliness.
This is how my blog membership options came to be. I didn’t want to feel lonely anymore. I didn’t want other bloggers feeling like they didn’t have anyone on their side. I want to create a place where bloggers come together and work as a team. Support and connection are so important and this is my way to bring both of them together.
Support and connection.
A way for bloggers to say, I need help in a way that doesn’t feel fake or misleading. A way for bloggers to come together to embrace the messiness, the confusion of blogging. A way for bloggers to fall in love even more with their blogs. A way for bloggers to come out of the loneliness, embrace the fear and begin to grow their blogs with real connections and real relationships.
Connection is a big piece of my why. I crave it. I want to have it. I want to create it. I don’t want other bloggers to feel the loneliness that I have felt over the years as a blogger. I want to bring people together and show them that in order to truly succeed, we need to have community over competition, community over loneliness.
I want to give the first 6 bloggers, 20% off my Affiliate Level blog membership. This means you will save $22.20/CAD per month. Your cost for the Affiliate Level blog membership would be $88.80/CAD. (Roughly $70/USD)
If you are looking for connection, blog growth, more understanding when it comes to blogging and to build relationships with other bloggers, this membership is for you. Please message me or comment on this blog post if you are interested in this deal and I will get you the details. Here is to building stronger relationships in the blogging community and helping women learn more about blogging.
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