I have a confession to make.
Before I started this blog, I thought to myself: I am doing this for me, I am doing this for fun, and if it never goes anywhere that needs to be okay with me. I made that deal with myself before the first post ever went up, because sometimes things work, and sometimes they don't. Unless you have tons of followers and page views, it is also almost impossible to make money off of a blog, so I knew I couldn't do it for that reason, either.
I loved it when people commented on the recipes on Facebook (and sometimes on the actual blog), and it tickled me silly when people actually wrote and told me they made one of the recipes. (I even got to try my friend Lisa's version of my guacamole at a party!)
But, somewhere along the way, my expectations got too high--for the blog, and even for me. I can get very anxious about things sometimes, silly things more often than not, and the blog started to become one of those things. I was anxious about what to make, whether it was new enough or if I should be more inventive. I was anxious that I didn't post enough, or did I post too much? I was anxious if there weren't as many comments--did that mean it was a bad recipe?
Rather than be inspired by the desire to do well and do better, it kind of paralyzed me and I noticed myself blogging less and less often until finally I went on hiatus.
I told myself once we got the house, things would be better. I would have more space, feel more motivated, etc., etc.
Unfortunately, I was still just as anxious about everything, just with more space to do it.
I realized somewhere along the way I lost my joy for cooking because I was too worried about how people would receive it. I was discouraged when there wasn't much feedback.
I became that person with a First World Problem with my blog. Boo hoo.
I actually told Hubby the other day I was thinking about shutting down the blog, because even though I am now back from Hiatus, it has still been almost six months since a recipe has gone up on here, and over two weeks since the last non-recipe post. My high expectations for myself said that's just not okay.
Hubby, Mrs. Webb-expert that he is, asked the question I didn't really want him to ask: Was I going to stop writing because I was discouraged, or because I actually didn't want to do it anymore?
Of course the answer was that I was discouraged. I was caving to an imagined pressure that just wasn't there, and I knew it. It was a pressure entirely of my own making.
I set out in this venture for myself, because it is something I had wanted to do for a while. I love cooking, I love sharing my vegetarian recipes with the world, and opening the eyes of even just one or two people that food without meat doesn't have to be boring or tasteless.
It was only ever supposed to be fun, and my own expectations skewed that.
So, hoping to conjure some feeling other than discouragement, I went back through my own archives... and found myself remembering how good all of those recipes tasted, how silly I felt with some of the mistakes I made in the recipes and posted anyway. And I found myself writing a new post for a new day, and feeling hopeful about it all over again.
All of this to say, I'm here to stay--at least for a little while longer. And if any of you have small-time ventures like this, I hope you remember why you started. If it wasn't for fame and fortune, don't put too much pressure on yourself. At the end of the day, it will just take the fun out of life.
See you next time! And I promise... Next time will actually bring a recipe.
