Two years ago, I started this blog with grandiose plans of being one of those enviable commercially-successful blogs (you know which ones I’m referring to) but oh my, those castles, how quickly they crumble to dust. I very quickly discovered a new-found respect for those who blogged on a regular basis.  It was also around this time that the Independent Fashion Bloggers Conference was scheduled and I had to have a blog in order to register as a participant (which, incidentally, proved to be the very best thing I could’ve done).

And the third catalyst? In the “real world”, I develop branding strategies and, yes, I write for a living.  Blogging was, theoretically, a way for me to let my hair down and write whatever I wanted without censure.

Everything came tumbling down fairly quickly though.  I had a job.  I had a husband and three teenage children.  Work got in the way.  Running a household got in the way.  Simply making it through the day got in the way, and, as you can clearly see from the Archives, blogging took a seat all the way at the very back.

It was never meant to be like that.

I’ve been writing since I was 7 years old, fiction, non fiction, plays, poetry.  Writing is all I’ve known for the most part of my life and yet blogging consistently was so very hard.  I’d start and stop loads of posts, each with a promising beginning but without an end.  Honestly?  I’ve been lost for a very long time now because writing is such a part of me that to feel like I’ve failed in this aspect of my life is nothing short of a heartbreaking sense of defeat.

Someone once told me that I was afraid of success.  That I often place roadblocks in my path to achieving any measure of success because I feared being successful.  I think that’s the craziest piece of truth I’ve ever heard.  Success scares the shit out of me.  I fear the change that success brings.  I fear the fame (or infamy) that success brings.  I find comfort in the status quo and I know that will no longer be the case with success.

That’s why I decided to take on the Blogging 101: Zero to Hero Challenge.  I’m not sure where this new journey will take me.  I don’t know with any measure of certainty if I’ll achieve success through this process but I’m truly praying that in fulfilling the daily assignments; in having to blog every single day; I’ll stop being so frightened of externalising how I feel, how I think, why I do what I do, who I am.  And maybe along the way, should success stop by, I won’t shy away like a deer caught in the headlights.

Love, Sheela

p/s this is Day 01 of a month-long project put together by the people at The Daily Post, homework of sorts 🙂