Go with the flow

It’s hard to balance tense and triggered aspects of self with the softer more malleable bits.

My anxiety makes me tense and rigid but it also deeply influences the way I write. But my softer more malleable side deeply influences my writing too.

It is often through writing that my anxieties subside and I am able to go with the flow, follow the words and not worry about the order or things making perfect sense but to instead stay inflow allowing the words to pour.

To be able to follow the flow no matter how brief or specific is something worth cherishing. When you’re tense and rigid or feeling overwhelmed by life it seems impossible that there’s any other way, but there is.

The flow is always there whether you choose that path or not. You can go back to it at any point because the moment you realise that what you’re doing isn’t working or should be different is the moment the solution becomes available.

How to lose your creativity?

Sometimes I find myself caught up in trying to be a blogger instead of simply just being myself. And in the process I find myself being drawn to creating content that I don’t love as much as I could.

When I first started blogging 8 years ago I was just sharing stuff that I was interested in which mostly included fashion and personal style. But over time instead of following my own flow of creativity I started trying to be a blogger. I ended up falling out of love with creating stuff to share online because I’d sacrificed my sense of self in order to try and fit it and do things ‘the right way’.

I didn’t realise it at the time but I lost my creativity. Not to the extent that I was unable to create because I haven’t really stopped blogging since I started. However, what my content lacked was passion, consistency and quality.

For the past few years I’ve ticked along in the lifestyle blogging space not improving, sharing, connecting, experimenting or expanding as much as I could have.

But starting this blog almost a year ago (can you believe it!) helped me in more ways than I could have imagined. Despite not having designed a fancy header or logo and the fact that this site contains no pictures, I feel more creative here than I’ve felt on wordsbygemm for the majority of the year.

On The Daily Gemm, I don’t get to hide behind content that has been done 101 timed before. As a result I’ve made up characters like Betty and Debbies brother, I’ve explored my feelings, wrote about my work life, shared my experiences with having anxiety, shared things that I’ve learnt and even written about current events like fires, abortion laws and politics.

The year is not over yet but I’m proud of all that I’ve managed to share so far and thankful to you for reading.

300 and something

Time flies when you’re daily blogging.

I’ve written over 300 posts for this site and I’ve manged to not run out of ideas.

If you’d have asked me 300 days ago what I’d be writing about towards the end of 2019 I’d have said ‘I’m not sure’. But something I’ve realised is that each blog post is simply the expansion of a thought and humans have tens of thousands of thoughts a day so I’ll never need to worry about running out of ideas.

And I find that the more I experience, grow and explore the more my perspective shifts and I’m able to expand on things I wrote previously or write them with a more developed mindset.

I also find that because I write each day I’m not so focused on the stats. However, what I do notice is familiar usernames that regularly read my posts and that is something I truly appreciate.

Who’s it for?

The answer might surprise you, or not.

By ‘it’ I mean this blog, the words, my writing.

I used to think that it was for you, that I was doing this because I had some great message to share with you and that it would hopefully inspire you in some way (or something along those lines).

But then I started reflecting on what I was writing about and how I was feeling each time I let the words pour out.

That’s when I realised that it was for me. I write for myself. Sure I want you to read it and I’m happy when you do but my musings of fear, challenges and the dreamlife are things I write because of the life I have lived.

I find it helpful to write a couple hundred words on overcoming a difficult situation because it serves as a reminder that not only is it possible, but that I’ve actually done it.

And when I think about all the pieces I’ve written it’s a reminder of the journey that I’m on and all the ‘gemms’ I’ve learnt along the way.

Some days the ‘gemm’ might be something I noticed whilst I was on the train and other days it’ll be an epiphany that changes the way I live my life.

And perhaps a few years ago I wouldn’t have had the confidence to share these random short pieces but I’m glad that I decided to start doing it.

Aspirations, assurance and an abundance of ideas

A few months ago I had an idea for my book and I planned to spend my summer writing in-between picnics, parties and Prosecco.

But summer came, summer went and nothing ever came of that book idea. Infact, I don’t even remember the idea that I had.

But then a few days ago I had another idea and I thought about how great it was that I have ideas in abundance.

And perhaps this current book idea will just become a series of blog posts but it could also become my bestselling debut.

Either way this situation of forgetting a good idea and quite seamlessly moving on to something else I’m just as happy with has served as important reminder.

First of all to follow through with my ideas but also that I’m full of them and I want to share them.

It can be difficult to admit that because it feels a bit showy to put yourself out there but it’s also necessary.

What I think of my old blog posts

The words I shared in January weren’t perfect. In fact they’re on the opposite end of the scale and I winced last week reading through them.

My writing style was not where I thought it was. It’s wasn’t witty, clear, concise and well written like I had hoped.

It was scattered with errors and I’d forgotten to take words out so some things didn’t quite make sense.

However, I was doing something new and getting the hang of writing something I felt comfortable sharing everyday.

But the beauty of doing this daily blogging thing is, each day I have the chance to write something better.

And then bit by bit (or even drip by drip – a reference to something Seth Godin has said many times) I’ll improve. Maybe practice won’t ever make perfect (what would the perfect blog post look like anyway?) but it will (almost) always make me better.

Have I said this before?

Umm, actually that’s kind of the point.

I used to think it was weird that people I followed online were always saying the same thing.

I’d read a post or watch a video and think ‘you’ve said that before’.

And they had. But then I gave it more thought and realised that it makes sense to say things you’ve said before. If you want to spread a message of course you won’t only say things once, some people have careers spent saying the same thing 101 times in cities across the globe.

How are you meant to get a strong message across if you only say something once?

A few months into this blog I realised I was writing about things I’d written about before but it’s not a bad thing.

My core message is still a work in progress but if you’ve been reading this blog regularly (even if it’s just one post a week) you’ll notice there are common threads.

I mostly write about the dream life, overcoming challenges, fear and getting to know yourself.

I guess I’m just like anyone sharing a message, whether it’s Gary Vee, Simon Sinek or Seth Godin.

Gary talks about kindness, leverage, etc…
Sinek talks about leadership and the golden circle etc.
And Seth talks about generosity, fear etc…

From them, I’v learnt that I need to have my own core themes and not be worried about saying something I’ve said before because in a lot of ways it’s actually a good thing.