My Blog at Shalavee.com, the home for my consistent creative writing outlet, turns 9 years old this month. She was born from a need to commit to my creative writing. She was an excuse to come out of my shell and show up online. And what I found out about myself through my honest words and connections with people in the world was that I had unlimited thoughts to convey and words to express them with.
I have regularly owned my words and shared them out loud on my blog. My thoughts weren’t always greeted with kindness and I was so insecure when I first started on social media, I was terrified to “friend” people. But over time, as with anything, I learned how I wanted to use these communication tools to communicate in a way I was comfortable with. I have since created long term friendships with and been witnessed by some pretty terrific people.
The blog helped me to discover I had an honest voice and people appreciated this. Through my blog, I discovered who I am to the world and to myself.
I am a Creativity Ambassador. I am a Mid-Life Mom. I practice Creative Soul Living and look for Wisdom Lessons in my everyday life. I don’t shy away from my truths and give them away freely in my Soul Selfies on Instagram and blog post essays. I spent many years as an Anxiety Warrior and finally allowed medication to help me over the unmovable hump to progress with my writing and blog and claim a new place in the world of words and thought leaders.
There is some big beautiful juicy things I can do here on earth through this outlet if I only envision a plan and get on with the business of writing it into reality.
See my 8th blogaversary post here. See my 7th blogaversary post here. See my 6th here. My 5th here. My 4th here. (pictures may not appear until the new sight is up).
Just you wait!
And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.
Where once I was reactively writing these blog posts the night before they were to go up, I kicked in with some proactivity recently and am writing my posts ahead of time. And the drawback to that was that I published two posts on Monday October 21st ,2019. So enjoy You Can’t Be Your Own Accountabilibuddy and Four Self-Value Phases and I will be back on Friday with another post per usual.
And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.
Within
a two day span, I had several of you my dear readers look me straight
in the eye and tell me that you had read and gotten something from my
last post. And this is what I noted after I thanked you for reading;
I’m being read. I am handing out how I feel and what I think with no
expectations about how many are reading or if it’s making a
difference. But you are and I am. And that feels strangely like an
awakening.
I
can and have spent a lot of time fretting about fulfilling a purpose
and you just told me I was. I have put myself through such
existential wringers while silently I impacted the world in the
slightest kindest ways. And I paid no attention to the fact that I
have said so much that my body of work probably speaks for itself.
Because I didn’t give myself credit for much of anything. Anxiety
feeds low self-esteem and around and around again.
It
dawned on me that perhaps I need to spend some time intentionally
getting to know myself. That I’ve been telling myself who I am but I
just haven’t been paying as much attention as I should have. Bad
parenting I guess. They say you already have everything you need to
know inside you, it’s just a matter of listening. So I’m thinking
I’m going to take the opportunity to get to know myself a little
better.
And
I just might make a new friend.
And
If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in
the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit
me on Instagram to
see my daily pictures, friend
me or like my
page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter
or Pinterest
too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me
please. I live for conversations.
Much that I have seen and read has disappeared from my memory. And still other books have affected me in glorious ways, although I can’t quote passages from these books. Sometimes what we are reading and listening to may not seem to be life-changing , but slight shifts within us can shade the way we progress from thereon.
Last year I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic and Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly. But had an immense impact on what I thought about my creativity and my need to risk the outcome of this creativism. But it wasn’t until I started to practice what I had read that it truly came full circle.
Sometimes thoughts need to percolate. This can be at odds with a culture that has an all or nothing, now or never mentality. But we continue to forget that life isn’t a result but a process. And the self-development process takes as long a it takes. Especially when we start at a deficit of knowledge or confidence to begin with.
“Every ‘next’ level of your life will demand
a different version of you.”
–Shaleah Dawnyel–
And I am also in awe at the concept that the more valuable ideas( like the one Brene Brown introduced on vulnerability) are circulated and percolate in our collective minds, the more we all start to shift toward a greater understanding of our collective wellness.
I owe so much of my thoughts that led to so many of my shifts to the big and small thoughts put out by writers, bloggers, and acquaintances online through posts and newsletters. Small bits and ahas filter through our resistances. And we grow each time we make the creative connections between these thoughts. As one of these acquaintances, Shaleah Dawnyel, put it, “Every ‘next’ level of your life will demand a different version of you.” We are never the same person at the end of the day that we started as. And that’s as it should be. We individually are works of art in progress.
And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter orPinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.
When I began my blog 7 years ago, all I knew was that I was creating an opportunity to write. My number one goal was to improve my writing. Little did I realize that I would be forced into becoming a social media maven. Or ignite my creativity and use these benefits to lower my anxieties. I had a lot of learning and growth ahead of me. I also had some tough times as I watched the world of people go do the things they were meant to do and leave me in their wake.
When you are online, it’s very hard to not notice that other people are getting their stuff done. They’re making communities and creating email lists and online courses. And you can EASILY feel as if you are completely incapable of doing any of this well enough to fit in much less rise to the top of the mountain you feel you too are meant to climb.
A well-respected online business branding consultant Kathleen Shannon of Braid Creative once said that as a blogger, you have to remember that there are A, B, and C levels to blogging. The newest people are the A’s. My blog site was very simple and primitive when I began. I didn’t take pictures and was entirely too verbose and I watched others online and groaned at my novice-ness.
But then eventually, I had to concede that I must have become a level B blogger. I understood enough about social media to know I disliked Twitter and Facebook too for that matter. All I wanted to do was just hang out on Instagram. And I kept writing, following other bloggers, taking courses, attending conferences, and I stayed friends with people. Eventually I realized that I was now even better of a writer than I had ever imagined I’d become. And that making money and gathering email addresses was not the kind of blogger I was.
Row row row my boat
So now I’m wondering, if I am not your typical blogger, what is it that I truly want to do with this vehicle? Of course, being online has allowed me to develop my voice and some pretty cool theories. I’ve quelled so much of my anxieties. But there’s one last wall I need to break through when it comes to my self-doubt. I may now have graduated to a C level blogger but I don’t want to act like one. Just because the public expects us to take a certain path with our blogs doesn’t mean we have to.
So here’s celebrating 7 years of devoting yourself to anything! In this case, it was my blogging and writing. And I am truly proud of myself for this devotion to connecting with what I think, getting better at expressing it, and connecting with a like-minded global community. My world is so much larger now than I ever imagined. I guess I’ll just keep blogging because I have to keep writing.
And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter orPinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.
My name is Shalagh Hogan, pronounced Shay-La. I'm the mother of a teen, a seven year-old, and I turned 54 this year. This blog was born in 2011 and my hope and joy as a writer, an artist, and an uber-creative, is that by sharing my journey of self-discovery, others will gain inspiration and permission for their own journeys.
