One of my weaknesses is getting my plans and ideas from my brain to the paper or screen. I can’t organize what is floating around in my head, but once I have it on paper, I can move bits and pieces around. I can make it make sense.
Today, I sat down and started organizing my business plan on the computer. I began by typing my biggest ideas. This is what I would do if I had all the money and time in the world to accomplish my goals. I didn’t write steps here. I just recorded my wildest ideas of what I hope to accomplish. It’s my Dream section.
Why start with that?
Dreams give me hope. They give me a positive outlook. They open and exercise my imagination. That’s why I began with my Dream business plan. I even included extra space to make notes and add to the dreams when something new occurs to me. While I was doing this, my post for today suddenly took a different turn. I had an idea about All Things Subject to Change and what I wanted to do with it.
When I started my blog in 2016, I wrote about whatever popped into my head, so the topics were all over the place. I was also very intermittent in my posting. There was no reason for anyone to follow my blog, so it became more of a venting space for me. A few years ago, I decided to start taking it more seriously, so I removed any content that wasn’t related to changing careers or becoming a writer. In other words, I did what so many recommend. I decided to “niche down,” and I have been uncomfortable with that decision ever since. I have a lot of ideas about a lot of different topics, and I find it exhausting to narrow all of my writing down to a single facet of my life.
The beauty of working on my business plan and doing some research for YouTube is that I’m realizing what kind of writer I am, and a single niche just isn’t for me on this blog. All the ideas I recorded in the Dream section of my business plan showed me that I’m trying to make a round peg fit into a square hole because someone else decided that’s how blogging should be done. I’m trying to make myself one-dimensional when I’m multi-faceted. Have you ever done that?
I recognize many successful bloggers recommend a single niche because it works for a lot of people, but I’m feeling chained down to a single subject when my life changes subjects every hour. I wish I could just write all day long, but that isn’t how my life works. I work, write, clean, cook, help senior family members, organize, craft, garden, volunteer at church, read, watch dramas and movies, and travel locally. I know that some subjects are best left to a single blog, but I’m taking my blog back from the advice of others and doing what fits my writing life. There are days when I don’t have anything to say about writing and working for myself, but I could write a whole volume on cooking, baking, organizing, crafting, etc. because that’s my life from one day to the next.
So in the third or fourth or fifth or whatever life of All Things Subject to Change, I’m thinking the blog will go back to being more representative of who I am as a person every day. Over the rest of the year, I want to change the look of the blog and begin to diversify my content to represent the life of a living, breathing, and working writer who isn’t always sitting at her keyboard. I hope that will draw in people who are experiencing the same thing. Your life might not look the same as mine, but if you are a working writer who enjoys the slow life, I hope you’ll find a home here as I transform the blog into something welcoming and comforting to people with multiple interests.
This is what a business plan is supposed to do. It’s supposed to help us take stock of what we are doing, the direction we want to pursue, and the changes we need to make. If I hadn’t begun the business plan, I would still be trying to dig up a single niche topic every week, and it would slowly kill my creativity. A business plan may help you realize that something you’re trying to do really isn’t working for you.
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Inspirational Verse for the Day:
She watches over the activities of her household and is never idle. Her sons rise up and call her blessed. Her husband also praises her: “Many women are capable, but you surpass them all!” Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised. Give her the reward of her labor, and let her works praise her at the city gates. (Proverbs 31: 27-31, CSB)
All Things Subject to Change 