A Conundrum.

I suppose it's time for a bit of an update.

But here is the thing. While I love blogging, I have been feeling a bit torn lately.

I originally started this blog to update family and friends about the renovations that we started doing on our tiny, little fixer-upper. Most of my immediate family lives across the country, my husband's immediate family is flung far and wide, and many of my friends from college/high school are also spread across a couple of countries. It just made sense to have one way for everyone to keep updated on all that we are doing. It was the easy thing to do.

As I continued to blog, I started having dreams of becoming the next YHL blog. I thought it would be so much fun to host a blog about decorating/renovating with a bit of personal stuff thrown in there. I also thought it would be really cool to maybe earn a bit of money off of it. After all, I LOVE writing and  could totally see myself blogging for a living. It would be perfect! So I started working towards that goal. I started posting regularly. I focused on doing projects that I could blog about and making it a point to sort of treat the blog like a job. That lasted for a couple of months.

But lately, I have transitioned to a different mindset. I started realizing, in my personal life, I was having a hard time dealing with blog-envy. I read fifteen or so blogs, on a regular basis, which all made money off of their websites. Soon I was lost in that dangerous world where you think everyone else has a better life than you. You read their posts and hear about their seemingly perfect lives and suddenly you are casting a view of self doubt on yourself. You see all the perfection in their lives and start to magnify all of the negative things in your personal life. You start to think, "If that person has time for all of that, I should be able to do the same!"

Expectations of one's self increase. Everyone else's life starts to look perfect. Self doubt starts to take over. Soon, the expectations you have on yourself are so high that no rational person could ever achieve them! Life becomes full of unrealistic goals and suddenly one becomes consumed with trying to be the perfect wife, friend, mother, daughter, etc. It is such an ugly path that social media seems to induce subtly.

See here is the thing: blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other forms of social media allow us to portray our lives in any way that we want to. Sometimes the bad comes out, but I would say that 75% of the time, we are bombarded with stuff that portrays a 'my life is better than yours' message. It may not be intentional, but that just seems to be how things work. Let's be honest here. We want the positive (and even the negative!) feedback. We need validation--whether it comes through the number of comments, likes, etc. Feedback, positive or negative, means that someone is paying attention to us. Someone "cares."

I don't want to be part of this. I never want someone to question their self worth or the beautiful life that God has given them, due to my blog posts or my facebook status'. My life is far from perfect. But, I love to focus on the positive in my life and try VERY hard to eliminate the negative thoughts and feelings that creep into my self talk on a daily basis. You can make a decision to let negative self talk consume you, or you can move on and give life to the positive things around you instead.  Abraham Lincoln once said, "We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”

It is all about the perception you have. 

(I prefer to just focus on the top one ;) ) 

Trust me, this is something that is relatively new to me. I still struggle. But since I decided to work on my attitude and focus on the positive, things have completely changed! My relationships with people changed. I started having days filled with the beauty of God's blessings instead of focusing on the things that just seemed to always be going wrong. I realized that every day had blessings, I just had to be ready to embrace them. I went through my blog list and cleaned out those that really weren't encouraging for me. I changed some settings on my facebook so that I'm not receiving every. single. update. for all of my facebook friends. I just recently logged out of my Pinterest account and don't have any plans for signing back in anytime soon. I'm just going to take a break for awhile. I'm just going to try to focus on my life for awhile--looking for the positives and creating the positive.

So anyways, I'm off on a bit of a tangent....What I'm trying to say is that I don't want to be the reason for another's unrealistic expectations. I want my blog to be God-honoring. I don't want it to be a place for me to just show off all of my accomplishments. I want others to gain from it, not feel discouraged by it.

So thus is my conundrum. Where does my desire for blogging fit in to all of this?

I'm just not so sure anymore.

What do you think? I would love some feedback!!! :D