It’s our birthday! The blog officially turns a year old this month, how crazy is that? Have you been following along since day 1? Or is this the first post you are reading? Or maybe you have read a few posts here and there or just recently started reading weekly. Wherever you fit into those categories, welcome to our birthday celebration.
Today, I would like to share my perspective of how things went since we made the decision to start this blog over a year ago and the process of starting and writing for it.
As still new friends, Elizabeth, Katelyn, and I decided to start a blog together last year. Honestly, I was very hesitant to agree at first. We all live in different states and different time zones, and at the time had never met each other in person, how was this blog idea supposed to work with new people I barely knew? I was pretty intimidated also, because both Elizabeth and Katelyn are self-proclaimed writers and although writing was never a struggle for me, I have never claimed to be a writer in any sense of the word. I was afraid that my blog posts would never be able to be compared to theirs.
As we started writing and posting, I could not believe this was really happening. I was really starting a blog with 2 girls I met through Facebook. By the time our first posts were made, we had already spent many hours on FaceTime, but I still hardly knew them. I had met Katelyn in person the month before but Elizabeth had been unable to join us and we did not get to meet her in person for another month after the blog started.
Over the past year, I have become more confident in my writing, but it has not been without many texts to our group chat after finishing a post asking if it made sense or saying I didn’t know if I got my point across clearly. Was I too repetitive? Did I leave things out or jump around too much? Did I give too much information? Are the people I wrote about going to read my post and know they are the ones I was writing about? So many questions floated through my head with each post.
As time went on, I realized that my blog posts were not as out of place between Elizabeth’s and Katelyn’s posts as I originally thought they would be. We each have different writing styles and ways of approaching topics, and that was the reason we had decided to always write on the same topics each week. Sometimes I still can’t believe I agreed to start a blog with writers, but the imposter syndrome has worn off a bit since we first started.
I have learned so much about myself, as well as Elizabeth and Katelyn and each of our communication styles, because we have had to work together this past year. These are things that I may have learned otherwise, but it probably would have taken way more time. I honestly think that starting this blog together has brought us closer than we would have been without it. We have grown and helped each other see ways that we can grow and change. We have discussed and established healthy boundaries, we have had hard conversations, we have had times of confusion and miscommunication. We have also had great conversations about our hopes for the future and we have connected over similar experiences in the past. We have spent countless hours on FaceTime just talking about the most random things. When things happen in our lives, we know that the others will be there to celebrate or commiserate with us.
As I look back at what I have learned, I am also looking forward to what I will learn in the next year and beyond. I am excited to see where we will go and how we will grow in the future. Things are going to change as we change, but that is the exciting part of growing. Our lives will each look different a year from now and it will be fun to get there and see how we have grown and learned since right now.
We are only a year in. Where are we going from here? Honestly, we don’t know. Katelyn, who was the mastermind behind this whole thing, has grand plans for the future. We also have lots of good topics coming up that we are excited to discuss and hope that you will all enjoy as well.
What do you want to see from us in the future? Do you like the way things are now or is there something more or different that you would like to see? Are there any specific topics you want to hear our thoughts on? Let us know, we want your feedback. And, thanks for celebrating our birthday with us!
Abbi