Armchair BEA: Beyond Your Blog

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Day 4 of the fab Armchair BEA! And I missed day 3! iFail, I know. But I’m getting busy with not missing today, lol!

So, let’s see. Blogging has been instrumental to my writing, that’s sure. By that I mean blogging has actually helped me get over the “showing others” terror I’ve had for years. The simple fact I write posts and some people sometimes respond to them has helped me out a lot, I’m now perfectly at ease with sharing whatever it is I write. Even if it may suck, lol. It helped me finally get over the “writer’s block” I always got at around 50k words into a story, for instance. Something about the rigor of reading then reviewing, sticking to schedules for things, socializing in such a caring and positive community, this has all had a great positive impact on me as a person, as a creative spirit let’s say. I’m still not quite as self-confided as I’d like, but I’m making steps in that direction, which believe me, is a huge thing.
Finishing my first manuscript is, to my mind, a direct consequence of blogging. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell you some years later that it helped me become what I’ve always wanted to be, a published author.

I haven’t gotten many freelancing opportunities or an “in” for specific events other then online ones, I do live halfway across the world from the hub of all the action, so to speak. But I haven’t been actually looking for freelancing opportunities, to be honest. I may begin to in the future, though.
However blogging has made an impact on my CV, people take it as “light” journalism experience actually over here, so at the moment it’s the only real experience on my CV, lol! I know, it’s odd, but I’m in one soundly odd place so it makes sense. Oddly. Lol!

Blogging has also exposed me to fiddling with themes, and that has become a bonus to my book blogging. Now I do themes and blog-related gfx now and then, just enough to sponsor some of my reading needs. It makes a lot of difference, actually. So the book blog helped me develop other skills aside the writing/sharing aspect of things, I reconnected with something related to what I used to study in highschool, which is programming. I’ve always been this odd mix of a rather “literary”, bookish person and a techy geek, so right now this is like the perfect balance for me.

It has encouraged me greatly to give accomplishing my dreams a real try. It sounds corny perhaps, but it’s my truth. I wouldn’t have guessed it would have such a great impact on me and my life, but it did. It helped me realize what it is I really want to do with my future, what I love doing – that I actually love doing something. It came as a revelation to me, I’ve always been the type of person who does really well whatever it is they’re doing, but I never had that feeling of, you know, “Wow! I love doing this! I’m happy doing this! I wanna do this again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that too!”. I just tended to operate on autopilot most of the time, doing my best at whatever it is I’m supposed to do, but feeling unplugged from it, totally disconnected, you know?

I may or may not get there someday, but it’s really important to me that I’ve managed to clarify I have a goal, a dream, a happy case scenario. Beyond my blog, or rather through it, I managed to really connected with myself.

What about you? Tell me in the comments or link me to your Armchair BEA post, what opportunities did your blogging bring up?

The_Butterfly_Livia
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21 thoughts on “Armchair BEA: Beyond Your Blog”

  4. Faith Hope & Cherrytea

    thx for sharing this encouraging post of your journey and accomplishments!
    what a revelation this was just writing a response to this aBEA post !
    great to put down in writing b/c it allowed recognition of what this blogging has evolved to thus far…

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  6. Preet @ AWR

    That’s true, I didn’t even think about the whole people seeing my work aspect! I think it has also increased my knowledge of html and photoshop, haha. Great points!

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  12. heidenkind

    Blogging is definitely a great way to develop confidence in your writing and other skills like design and programming–I’ve found that to be true for myself, as well. Very inspiring post!

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  15. Livia ~ BoM Books

    Thanks Amanda! 

    Well, I wouldn’t have thought of it really, but an interviewer asked me about it somehow, like “You have no experience in journalism? If you’ve had an active blog for more then 6 months, for instance, that’s experience that’s taken into consideration.”. When I told them I did, they were all like, put that in your CV next time 😀 
    So I did 😀 Beats having no experience at all, lol…

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