In 2019 I upgraded to a pricier, sexier platform called WIX, thinking that I could achieve even more fancy things if I paid a ton of money. But you know what? Honestly the more money thing just made me feel even more pressure to be cool. Somehow I had built up this idea that my website should be a thing of beauty to behold and an incredible multimedia experience for anyone who found it.
In the back of my mind there was this idea that my little blog on Blogger.com was not nearly professional or grand enough.
But a few months ago something happened that really surprised me: The web domain I was using expired and rather than panicking and jumping to renew it I was completely fine. Not only fine, but it felt like a release from this heavy expectation I had to create a trendy, glossy site.
I was living out this lie that in order to succeed I needed a fancy site. But all of a sudden when I lost my domain I was just excited to finally be able to drop the pretense of being a web designer and instead I could just focus on making my blog good again.
It really bothered me that I had both a website and a blog. I'm not a very high-powered person and the idea of doing both well was ludicrous. And indeed, I had a crappy website and a dormant blog.
I feel like now I can aspire to having a decent blog. I plan to use this blog to fulfill the functions of my former website. I can post my art here, have a brief overview of who I am and contact info--all the stuff a freelance artist should have but free.
Blogger is more my speed than WIX. It is not a trendy site anymore, and hasn't really been for about seven years. But I like it because I know it and it doesn't feel too good for me.
This whole website comes back to the thing I am always wrestling with in my freelance career: Not living up to it. As you know if you've read a few of my other posts about freelancing thus far, I struggle with major imposter syndrome.
One thing that really made me feel gross about my WIX website is that no matter how much stuff I put on there, it never felt like I was making enough use of it. I wasn't justifying the amount of money I put into it, because I underutilized all of the amazing features like slideshow modes, cool buttons and doohickeys that make everything BETTER.
I listened to the voice that whispered, "Your dinky little Blogger site is not good enough. It's too simple and tacky. If you stick with it you won't make it in this arena."
I allowed that voice to have power over me and it resulted in losing money, a lot of frustration and a deep sense of shame.
I'm excited to continue working on making this blog something I am proud of, instead of something I'm slightly embarrassed by. I still haven't totally found my blogging groove, but when I made the illustrations for this particular post I felt excited.
I felt like I was discovering a new visual style that was fun and playful and made me excited about creating work for this space again. I hope to keep playing with these bold colors and graphic, comic-y drawings. I'm proud of these little drawings.
Re-entering this blog space and figuring out how I want to show up here has been a long process. I expected to be able to just jump right back in and have a very clear direction. But I don't. I'm slowly, slowly learning about what my blog is again and it's kind of a messy process. Thanks for your patience.
Your Blog Friend,
Lucy🌹
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