Advice from a Middle-Aged, Former Over-Achiever

Next week I will be attending my very first personal finance conference.

This is important for two reasons. First, because I will be moving one step closer to my dream. Getting my finances in order. Solidifying my future. Expanding my education by learning more about investing, saving and creating smart financial goals.

The second reason is because I will be taking this excursion entirely on my own. No friends or family to lean on. Navigating an airport, ground transportation, and a ginormous resort hotel. By. Myself.

To those of you who actually know me, your jaws have probably dropped to the floor by now. Because I barely leave the house, much less travel across the country.

via GIPHY

I’m a remote worker, faithful Amazon Prime member and loyal user of Peapod grocery delivery service. I prefer to have things come to me.

More importantly, I prefer not to go out in public. At least not very often.

So the fact that I’m stepping out into the “real world” and leaning into my discomfort, is extremely surprising to those I know.

 What I Learned From One Year of Anonymous Blogging

It’s been one year since I started this journey of blogging anonymously.

When I researched and purchased my domain name, set up a pretty basic and free WordPress theme. Signed up for a few free online courses. And dove headfirst into the glamorous world of beginner blogging.

Along the way, I’ve learned a few things.

Things like:

Your website doesn’t need to be that fancy, since most people will be reading your blog over mobile anyway.

Pinterest is a quick way to start getting traffic, but it isn’t the end-all-be-all of blogging strategy. And it shouldn’t be your only means of gaining traffic.

Also, a lot of people will try to sell you stuff. The magic elixir to blogging success. The way to increase blog traffic by 5000%. The secret sauce to making an affiliate sale within 5 hours so you can haul in $80,000 of profits in your first 30 days. Ha.

But a lot of them are really good at it because I’ve fallen for so many of these sales pitches over the past 12 months.

Also, I happen to be an extremely optimistic and trusting person, giving most people the benefit of the doubt. So I’m sure that played into the equation as well.

And, oh yeah, the MOST important thing I’ve learned as an anonymous blogger —

Blogging is HARD work.
There is A LOT to learn.
And it can be overwhelming.

So why would anyone want to begin blogging in the first place?

And why in the world would you even think about blogging anonymously?

Starting a blog is a scary thing.

You’re putting yourself out there for the whole world to see.  All eyes are on you.

Will anyone read it? Will anyone take you seriously?

And if they do take you seriously, will they hate everything you’ve written?

There are so many great bloggers out there … how can you possibly compete with their awesome-ness?

What if one of them reads your stuff and calls you a fraud — or what if NO ONE reads your stuff??? Aaaaccckkkk!!!!!!

You open yourself up to such intense criticism, who knows if you will ever recover.

Just kidding. That’s not the way it is.

That’s just what your mind tells you, at first.

In all reality, you will stress out way more than is necessary, worrying about how people will react to what you’ve written.

In the beginning, unless you send your posts directly to friends and family members who will share their fully-biased support, it’s highly unlikely that you will gain random, out-of-the-blue readership.

(There — feel better now??)

In my case, I honestly don’t know what’s worse — having friends & family pick apart all of my posts — wondering if I’m referring to them — asking why I’m not writing more about them specifically ….

Or not having an audience at all.

Like, literally hearing crickets. (Well, I guess not literally crickets, unless I’m sitting out in my back yard …)

Having a Captive Audience

So if you’re starting a blog, why wouldn’t you want your friends and family to be the very first to experience your well-thought-out nuggets of wisdom?