An audience of One
It has almost been 8 years of doing the best thing I ever started - my blog. It has brought me so much joy, and has been the catalyst for so many other incredible things in my life. I met some of my favourite people through starting my blog. I wrote and self-published books because of my blog. I started my podcast because of my blog. I even launched into a new career - because of my blog.
And now - 8 years later, I want to celebrate this milestone with 8 lessons I learned over the past 8 years of blogging. One of them (which I may write about more at length) is that having a practice of writing and sharing has had wide reaching impacts on my life - some of them that feel totally unrelated - but that are intimately linked. It only seems fitting to write this series - since writing life lessons started it all - and I miss writing lessons. So this series is about 8 lessons I have learned in the past 8 years of blogging. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed writing them!
One of the surprising lessons I learned in the past 8 years is the power of an audience of one. And it may seem strange that I am celebrating 8 years of blogging by talking about an audience of 1. After 8 years of being out in the interwebs and producing a lot of creative output - I have an audience that is definitely bigger than one (even on the days when it isn’t much bigger).
But I am also a LONGstanding letter writer - and one of my biggest joys in life have been building deep connection with an audience of one. I am even indoctrinating my nephews and niece into the letter writing hall of fame, and I got a lovely heartfelt reply letter from my nephew the other day.
So I thought this would be great to start the lessons I learned in the past 8 years of blogging - embracing the audience of one.
A friend of mine asked me a couple of years ago how I would feel if I only had an audience of one. She was referring to my podcast - but I have also thought about it in relation to my blog - off and on over the years - and it speaks to my own relationship with my creativity, and with an audience - and why I write or create.
On the one hand, I have almost always created for the love of it - to see if something works! From the jewelry and craft that I still make to this day, to recent designs that have showed up on the back of my card decks, and the front of one of my softest, warmest sweaters - to the romance novels I dabbled in a few years ago - and even to starting this blog almost 8 years ago - I love to make stuff. It’s fun and in the past 8 years - every time I have returned to the fun of it all - I have surprised myself at what I have been able to create. On the contrary - when I focus on the metrics - on the size of my audience - my creative energy gets replaced by stress - and there will be more on this in another blog post.
However, there is one unmistakable truth when it comes to my writing - it has always been about connection. About connection to ideas, and sometimes connecting one idea to another - but also - connection to another person. It’s the reason why I have loved writing letters so much. Yeah - I’m a seventies baby, and writing letters was one of the only ways I had to connect to my friends when I moved to the UK in my late teens (well - letters and feeding pound coins into a pay phone with tears streaming down my face when I realized that my hourly wages were buying me mere minutes).
And so while I love writing and creating when it comes to blogging (and my fiction) it has always felt one sided if I felt like no-one was reading, or responding. It felt like half of a conversation - like shouting out a question or greeting and not getting one in return.
A few years ago, I moved country and changed jobs, and I found it hard to have the headspace to write. I continued to podcast, and to create - in fact I found that I was more creative in completely different types of projects (more on that another time) but my writing felt stationery and stagnant. When I finally decided it was time to write again, I decided that I only needed it to be two things. I needed it to be fun, and I needed it to connect me to someone, to be a part of a conversation. And so - I returned to my first love - letter writing to an audience of one.
I started writing a daily email (this blog post was born from one of those daily emails) which eventually became a weekly email. And while the weekly email now goes out to a few people, when it started, it was for an audience of one - my penpal. She was the one person I could count on - to read my email, and to enjoy it, and to respond - whether it was via questions or comments over whatsapp - or even our weekly catch ups, or whether she hit reply - or whether we simply found ourselves planning an adventure based on something I mentioned, these daily emails served to connect me more deeply with my friend, and got me back into the swing of writing again.
I was reminded of something that I sometimes forget to remember - that no writing is wasted.
That writing for an audience of one is creative and fun and precious.
That it isn’t about the size of the audience.
That if I ensure that my connection cup is full, then I am far less worried about metrics and page views.
That the heart of my writing is joy and connection, and I can achieve that from an audience of one.
And so - that is how I managed to reignite my love for writing, and get back to a point where I could write and (hopefully) publish blog posts again, where I could feel excited about what I was writing and sharing. And while the next rung on this ladder is actually posting on my blog again (where I hope that you are reading this) - this is the first of the lessons I learned over 8 years of blogging - to return to the heart of my writing, and to embrace my audience of one (and thanks if you are reading this!)
Are you a letter writer? Why do you write? And how would you connect with an audience of one?
I send you big love from a small island.