I posted my last blog post 19 days ago. Almost 3 weeks ago. While I started out so enthusiastically with this space of personal blogging, I suddenly found myself gravitating away from it. I was afraid of what was causing it.
The main reason why I was so skeptical about this was that I wanted to make this blog my own brand. And what does it say about me if I am not even enthusiastic enough to write every other week? I started micro-analyzing my capabilities. I started becoming hard on myself.
I have this habit of procrastinating, I am pretty sure everyone does. But, in the past few days, I have been finding myself procrastinating every single event that I am supposed to do. And updating the blog was a part of it. I was livid, I was torn but mostly, I was clueless.
Clueless, as to why it is happening. Clueless, as to what I can do to change that without making it worse. So, I sat down yesterday and started thinking. Yeah, it was Diwali yesterday and I was at home, thinking.
Why am I being so hard on myself?
This was the first thought that came to my mind. Somewhere along the line of starting out this personal blog and doing everything singlehandedly, I forgot that it was my recluse, not my job. I forgot that I updated the blog because I wanted an escape from my daily routine life.
But, while I was thinking about everything yesterday, I realized that I am not just rigid with myself about blogging but almost every sphere of life.
I panic easily, I become anxious easily and if something doesn’t go as per the plan, I blame myself even when it’s not my fault.
I know there are so many people out there feeling something similar. Taking the time yesterday to just self-reflect made me realize that I am being hard on myself for no apparent reason. Every single outcome is not in my hands. I need to understand that I don’t control everything.
But, I don’t.
Is it the competition?
Competition is rising in today’s world. People are busy overthrowing the one on top to make space for them. While that is okay, the effects it has on one’s mental health isn’t.
The constant appraisal and the fight for that number 1 position has made us so stringent with our own thoughts that we can’t even appreciate the small joys in life.
We have big dreams. We have big goals. We have big achievements to conquer. Nothing in today’s date is small, not even the joy one gets when their aim with the paper ball hits perfectly inside the waste paper bin.
That’s how much programmed our life has become because of the competition surrounding us.
Is it social media?
Ironically, I was watching a YouTube video yesterday of a regular vlogger and I came across them saying how they are being so hard on themselves just because they couldn’t update a vlog the other day or keep their social accounts updated as they should.
And, I was shocked how much similar our emotions were.
It is true that my blog doesn’t get thousands of people every day and neither does it have a big name. But, not being able to update made me feel like a failure.
In the back of my head, I knew that it’s okay but my mind constantly kept replaying how quickly the 2 visitors coming to the blog now won’t come back again if I keep doing this.
And, I was back to being hard on myself.
What am I trying to say?
Well, I said in my previous blog article that I won’t be very frequent with the posts because I believe that quality beats quantity.
But, the next day when I woke up, I had this constant nagging feeling that not updating as much would end up leaving my blog behind in the sea of other “non-existent” blogs.
I didn’t want that. I didn’t want my “building” personal brand to be among the non-existent blog piles.
So, I started overthinking but good that I did because, for someone with such a jumbled thought process, I was able to churn out ideas for some of the upcoming blogs that I want to write.
When you have such roadblocks and you are finding yourself self-criticizing, I would suggest that you watch videos or read through other blogs. It helps, a lot!
Being hard on yourself is okay because you come out stronger from the other side.