Blog like it's 2012

Hi everyone, it's been a while but I'm back!

A photo of me in a Christmas jumper with a tartan scrunchie on my wrist and tinsel in my hair.

Can you believe it's nearly the end of 2020? This year has not been kind and like many, I'll be glad to see the back of it.

I had a break...

I've not intentionally taken a break but I think it's one that I've needed after the year we've had. Pandemic aside, over the last few months, I've been occupied by settling into my new home, building up my small business and focusing on my work. In all honesty, this blog hasn't been one of my main priorities for a while and it's fallen into the pile of "things I want to do but apparently don't have time for".

I've fought with myself about finding time and motivation to blog a lot over the last few months but without success. I have a huge list of ideas for new content but actually getting on with it has been the hard part and the only reason I've avoided it is because I'm constantly worried it's not going to be good enough. There's such a high expectation for blog content these days and I feel like I'm pretending to be a blogger a lot of the time. It's something I've always enjoyed but the expectation sucks the fun right out of it.

On top of that, as I mentioned before, my focus has been elsewhere. I've been thoroughly enjoying running a small business and I've spent a lot of the time I would have spent blogging on making new products and running my small business which I am extremely proud of. What I want to do is be able to divide my time (and motivation) equally between running the business and blogging. They are both very demanding hobbies but ones I've realised I'm equally as passionate about.

After thinking a lot about all of this, I've come up with an idea which should have been obvious to me. My main worry about the blog is that my content isn't good enough. I am a classic case of that person who is always comparing herself to others. And when I do post, I'm always worrying that I haven't used every little trick in the book to get my post seen. Pinterest posts, SEO, keywords, etc. The list is endless and it's exactly this sort of stuff that sucks the fun out of blogging.

I know that I have GOT to stop comparing myself to others and just get on with it. I often sit here feeling "sorry for myself" because my blog isn't doing well and it's not going to if I avoid posting and worry about every little thing when I do post! 

So instead, I've made a plan. It'll be a hard one to stick to but one I feel like I can get on board with:

I'm going to blog like it's 2012.

Back in the day, blogging was fun! We shared what we wanted to share and didn't worry about SEO, posting on every social media platform that we'd had a new blog post, if it was useful to our audience or if it had the keywords Google would be looking for to make it a top search. We just shared what we bought that week, an outfit we loved, our favourite songs that month or favourites. Do you remember the "what's in my bag?" posts? Maybe going back to that will spark that love for blogging back into a warm fire.

So, what's next?

My intention is that I will re-launch At Home With Cat properly in the new year and with all-new home content especially since I haven't talked about my move or the new house AT ALL yet.

I'll post the way I want to post and when I want to - which I hope will be regularly. I want to start with one post a week and anything extra would just be a bonus. I'll probably post on the weekends so that I can focus on work and the small business during the week and have Sundays for myself. 

From today, I want to see if I can do 12 days of blogging for Christmas but I'm going to try and not be disappointed if I don't because it's a lot of work to do. Either way, I want to try as I had a bunch of ideas on what I wanted to post before Christmas. The classic sharing of Christmas decorations, Christmas recipes and Christmas-inspired outfits. 

My intention is that you can expect a lot from me and my blog in 2021 and see 2020 as a blip. The year practically everyone wished didn't happen.

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