You really cannot plan for life too far.
Over 6 years ago I had learned that bloggers made money. Thai Chicken Salad recipe search lead me to this food blogger who also had food blogger training. She shared how she went from making $20/month to $20,000/month in a few years.
My mind had already been blown when her recipe called for bleach to bleach cabbage to make the food somehow better (No. I skipped that step when I made my salad). But make that much money writing a blog? I felt I had been cheated to think that the only way to make money was to work for someone.
So I started a blog, not knowing what to write. I subscribed to Problogger.com and learned all kinds of ways to be a successful blogger.
I had fun learning all about building a website on WordPress, how to blog, what plugins are and how to use them. Learned about Mail Chimp and Survey Monkey (why the primate reference???)
But I had one problem.
My interest was so random. I didn’t have any niche to hone in like many blogger help sites suggested. I wrote about camping etiquette, Billy Joel, how I didn’t appreciate marijuana smoke in a public area, and how I finally canceled cable.
I am also not outgoing nor peppy or friendly like most people. But I felt like I had to be a certain personality to be successful enough to make money by blogging. So I tried to imitate a version of what I thought was blogger-personality. Wasn’t pretty. It was painful. I just felt so fake trying to be someone I wasn’t. After posting those random topics mentioned, I stopped.
I continued to pay for the site and the blogger training subscription for 20 months too many before I shut it all down. I gave up a cool website name, even though they suggested no matter how small or zero chance I think I would use the website again, I should keep a backup and keep the website name. I was very sure. I let it all go. If anything, this experience taught me was that I wasn’t a blogger. Not a rich one. Not even a poor one.
But then, what are you doing now?
Here you are reading my new blog. It turns out that I had it all wrong. Blogging doesn’t make money. Helping people do. Problem-solving does. Offering my perspective does.
I don’t have kids. Who I am going to share my perspectives with? Who am I going to talk about my parents’ legacy with?
Besides, I now have a more narrowed-down niche I want to talk about – to put useful info out there for anyone who is where I was 5-15-25 years ago.
So here I go, having fun again with website building and blogging about my perspective I have gained throughout my life in Japan and in the US. I hope you’d come along to discover your own unexpected turn in your life, no matter how subtle.
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