I recently started a job for an up and coming shoe designer. While my main job was supposed to be monitoring our web business and customers, my supervisors couldn’t help but notice my passion for social media. And when I say passion, I obviously mean sick obsession. I am now fully in charge of our twitter and facebook accounts, which, I have to be honest, I love! We have a blog at our company and for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, the blog scares the hell out of me. I have purposely been avoiding any and all conversation about updating our less than perfect blog since I started here. There’s no pressure with twitter, 140 characters, what can go wrong? Who can you offend? How many type-o’s can there be? Facebook, people love what you write no matter what it is if they love your company. In their eyes, you can do no wrong. But blogs… so much room for error, so much room for people to hate what you say! Like I said, blogs just scare me.
I’ve tried to blog in the past… it seemed like the cool thing to do. I succumbed to peer pressure of the trendy blogging world. I won’t try to kid you guys, or myself, I’m no blogger. I copy other blogger’s layouts, I talk about what other people are talking about, I find it hard to find my own “voice.” This, the more I think about it, is so weird. Growing up my mom worked for her brother’s newspaper and my older cousin had a column called “Chatter by Charlie” and readers loved it. Eventually he got a little too old and decided to pass the reigns down to me. I was in 5th grade when I started writing this column which appeared weekly in The Atlanticville. My uncle so cleverly titled the column “Ramblin’ with Rachel” and I became an overnight (local) celebrity. Well maybe not a celebrity, but people knew who I was. And I was nine years old, in my mind; I was as cool as they come. My blog was not exactly tabloid material or even blog worthy; I literally wrote about my day. I was 9… how exciting could it be? I would write about sleepovers with my best friends Cat and Jenny, or going out to dinner with my family for my older brother’s birthday. Would you believe that I got fan mail? People actually enjoyed reading about my day. As I got older, though, much like Charlie I started to lose interest in my own column and eventually just gave it up all together. It wasn’t until I was in 8th grade and September 11th happened that I decided to write one final column. The topic of which caused quite a stir at my middle school; how poorly my school handled the situation. I did not intend the column to come across that way, it was not my intention to bash my school or the teachers or even our principal. I was young, and I wrote what I felt, and at that time I felt like my school really let us down. It caused such a stir amongst the school staff that for the rest of the year, I could not get in trouble because everyone was afraid I would write about them in the paper. I purposely tried to get detention on several different occasions with no luck. Let’s just say, the rest of 8th grade was a breeze.
During high school I wrote a few CD reviews for my now husband’s band. I think that is what eventually broke me of writing. During high school I had a BIG crush on this guy. When he reached out to me to write this CD review for him I thought I had died and gone to Heaven. However, I was so nervous because I had never written anything even remotely close to that before, something with substance and purpose that someone is actually looking forward to reading. By the time Thursday came around and the first story went to press, I had freaked myself out so badly and convinced myself it was the worst piece of writing anyone had ever came up with, I didn’t even want to go to school! I remember trying to fake sick and my mom was not having it. She eventually forced me out of the door with my figurative tail tucked between my legs. Between homeroom and first period I was walking down B hall when I saw two of the band members sharing a newspaper walking towards me. Before they had a chance to notice me I ducked into the nurse’s office and hid there until they passed by and were clear out of sight. To this day my husband reassures me that there was nothing wrong with the article and that I did a great job, but writing those articles for them really ruined me. I’m sure it had all to do with the fact that I had the world’s biggest crush on this guy and did not want to look like an idiot, rather than my actual writing, but it was enough to freak me out for the rest of my life. I never wanted to put my writing out there for anyone to read and judge ever again. Even throughout high school and college, handing in a paper for class gave me anxiety. I was a great writer; I received A’s in my writing classes where the one professor gave everyone C’s across the board. I had nothing to worry about but I could not find that confidence in my writing that I used to have.
But… I digress. The point of this blog is to get enough practice that I feel more comfortable writing a blog for my company that people are actually going to see and read and want to take something from it. So on this blog, I’m simply going to write about what I know. I’m not going to pretend I’m a fashionista or a music guru. I will simply write about my life and my experiences, what makes me tick and what makes me laugh. I will graciously accept any comments or critiques with open arms. Most importantly, I just hope you enjoy it.
Until next time. xoxo
Great first post. Your a natural!
thanks girl!