Okay friends, for today’s Thoughtful Thursday post I wanted to share that I’m struggling. I did have a topic planned for this post, but the reality is I was not feeling the topic I had planned to discuss today. It took everything within me to quit staring at that blinking cursor on the screen as it mocked me and to just start typing SOMETHING! Admittedly, sometimes it’s difficult being a content creator and consistently sharing content publicly. And for me in particular, as a recovering perfectionist, I always want to share really high quality content. However, I’m learning that maybe it’s okay to sometimes share things in a little more raw and uncurated way.

Some days it can be challenging to feel inspired and that’s tough since as a content creator I tend to share out of inspiration. But, I also strive to share content consistently. For the most part I absolutely love content creation. I am a creative person in general, and over my lifetime that creativity has been channeled in different ways. When I was very young I enjoyed writing poetry and short stories, or even just journaling to process thoughts and feelings. In high school and college I was really into photography and enjoyed that as a creative outlet. Later as a wife I was able to express creativity in the kitchen and in decorating our home and making it cozy. Then when our children were young I enjoyed spending time with them and coming up with fun activities for them. As the kids became school aged, I got involved in volunteering with their schools and working with some non for profit organizations, which seemed to usually involve communication and community building. I was also able to express creativity when I ran my own business as a professional organizer. Currently a lot of my creativity has been channeled into sharing creative content. For those of you who don’t know, I did graduate with a journalism degree and I never anticipated using my degree in this way, but I do feel like content creation is adjacent to journalism. 

I think in addition to sometimes feeling uninspired and unsure of what to share for Thoughtful Thursday thoughts, I sometimes feel unsure or uninspired in general with what to share on all social media outlets. For my YouTube channel, I have been feeling like I have exhausted all of the organizing, decluttering, and cleaning projects around my home. Hopefully even in the redundancy I inspire or motivate people though my videos. I’m not sure how most people feel, but I wonder if over time content creators become repetitive and therefore boring. For me it’s not just about making sure my audience isn’t bored, it’s also about feeling creatively inspired in my sharing and for my YouTube channel I get tired of editing the same type of footage over and over. Because of that, there will be some changes on my channel and part of that is a shift in my own personal focus – away from decluttering and organizing my spaces now that most of my spaces are in maintenance mode and towards living a slower life and incorporating more travel in particular. I have several trips planned coming up and I will be sharing those experiences in travel vlogs. My hope is this type of content, while different from what I have shared in the past will still be enjoyable and my viewers would get value from some of my upcoming content.

Part of the struggle of being a content creator is for sure coming up with content and consistently sharing from a place of inspiration. But, another challenging part of being a content creator is everything going on behind the scenes as I share somewhat benign content online.

Most content creators are sharing within a niche. For me I’m sharing organizing, cleaning, decluttering, and minimalism content. Obviously this is one small facet of my life. I have been trying to share a little more candidly through these Thoughtful Thursday posts, but I want you to know there are a lot of things I don’t share about my life. This is something that is intentional. I think it’s important to have boundaries online with what I share. I don’t share details about my personal life or about my family, and that is intentional. My intention has never been to hide anything, but more so to protect my family and to keep my content within my niche.

However, because of that, when I’m having a rough day or a rough few days it can be especially difficult to share content. I am someone who is pretty vulnerable and open with people in my real life, so it does sometimes feel odd to have heavy stuff going on behind the scenes and not talk about it the places I share creative content. But like I said, this is an intentional choice I have made.

I think a lot of content creators are the same way. We all are real people with real problems in life. Just because we don’t talk about them doesn’t mean we don’t have them. Most content creators curate what they show you. Not because we are deceitful, but because we are showing you a very small facet of our lives to motivate, inspire, challenge, or encourage our audience.

With all this said, the past few days have been pretty rough for me, and it’s been challenging to share content publicly. It feels like I’m hiding heavy stuff that is going on behind the scenes. That is why I am sharing about this today, being as real as I can while also honoring my boundaries. If you look at someone’s online presence and think they have it all together, they have a near perfect life, they seem so happy, or they don’t seem to have many problems, I can guarantee that there ARE things going on behind the scenes that you know nothing about. And I can attest to this with my own life.

I know for the most part I come across as very positive and upbeat, and that truly is who I am. I am in general someone who is an optimist and sees the silver linings, but some days are harder than others. And some days it’s too much to handle the heavy stuff going on in life and I feel down. So I want you to know if you feel like you don’t have it together, your life is a mess, you are struggling to feel happy, or you are dealing with some heavy problems in life – YOU ARE NOT ALONE! 

Today, the sun is shining in Austin, and it is helping me to feel better. I am just going to continue all of those healthy practices that I strive to make a part of my everyday life – getting exercise, getting good sleep, eating healthy, drinking plenty of water, and meditating. When we can’t change the people around us, or change our circumstances, we CAN change how we react. And we can do everything within our power to make OURSELVES better. Because we are the only person we are in charge of. We have autonomy over our actions, our thoughts, and the way we handle things. I hope this encourages someone today!