Prepare yourself for a long, word-vomit type post. If that’s not your thing and you’d rather something more concrete then no biggie, maybe try my discussion about whether blog views mean anything without engagement or the 6 women who are a huge inspiration to me right now. But if you don’t mind a bit of word-vomit (that’s rank) then welcome. Grab a cuppa, a cake, a roast dinner – whatever floats your boat today and settle in.
Back in about mid March, I had a bit of a… I don’t want to say melt down because it certainly wasn’t a melt down and it feels a little disrespectful to call it that but I had a… wobble. Let’s say. I didn’t have a bad month last month. Personally, it was good. Blogging wise, it was good. Everything went along just tickedy-boo.
But for some reason, mid month I got hit with this giant wave of self doubt, hopelessness and feelings of wondering what the point of blogging and this “online world” was, whether if I jacked this all in today would literally anyone on the planet even notice?
A couple of stupid, insignificant things triggered this, including my views being a little down than normal – which is a ridiculous thing to get in a state about for a variety of reasons – but once I got those thoughts in my head, they were seriously hard to shift.
I knew deep down in my heart that I wasn’t going to jack it all in, despite how melodramatic I was being on Twitter. I love blogging so much that a little blip on my radar wouldn’t deter me from it. There are times where I wonder whether I’m enough, whether I’m good enough, whether I’m offering anything of value to the world. But I think those are pretty normal thoughts.
However, one main thing that I thought about when this was going on was the prospect of giving up and even though I knew I wouldn’t, it made me think about how ‘giving up’ is always seen as such a bad and negative thing. That if we give up, we’ve failed, we’ve let ourselves down, we’re lazy or something else equally as shit.
Which led me to think about how it’s okay to admit defeat. It’s okay to draw a line under something when it’s not working. It’s okay to walk away from something. Despite what all the “inspirational” Pinterest quotes might say, it’s OKAY TO GIVE UP.
I’m all for positivity and encouragement and cheering people on to go and achieve their dreams. But I’m also all for supporting someone who has just given up on their dream when it became too much. Admitting defeat isn’t embarrassing or humiliating. I think sometimes, it’s the strongest damn thing you can ever do.
We all want to hold on to things; relationships, friendships, jobs, goals, dreams. But knowing when to let go is a privilege. A teeny-weeny example of this was last month, a goal of mine was to hit 10,000 page views which by 29th March I realised I wasn’t going to do. I was bummed but I gave up trying and focused on something else instead.
I’m going to wrap this up because I don’t really know what else to say (see, I’m giving up on this blog post already, not a big deal is it?) but the next time you’re scrolling through Pinterest and are bombarded with quotes telling you that you must chase your dreams and must never give up and you feel completely deflated from it, just close the app and have a cake. Seriously, it’ll make you feel better.
Have you ever given up with something important in your life? Do you feel like there’s too much pressure on ‘never giving up’ and the negative connotations that come with it?
